Dampening considered harmful? (Was: Re: verizon.net and other email grief)

Thu Dec 16 23:21:23 UTC 2004

>
>	i've been wondering, since most people aren't using a
>25xx class router for bgp anymore, and the forwarding planes
>are able to cope more when 'bad things(tm)' happen, what the value
>of dampening is these days.
>
>	ie: does dampening cause more problems than it tries to solve/avoid
>these days.
>
>	- jared
>

I don't know what takes more router resources;  dampening enabled 
doing the dampening calculations, or no dampening and constantly 
churning the BGP table.  I would assume dampening generally saves 
router resources, or operators wouldn't chose to enable it.

I don't know about the rest of the network operators, but the threat 
of ever being dampened makes me much more careful with my network in 
general.  My general practice is that if a transit line has problems, 
it's BGP session is put in an admin down state ASAP until the 
problems can be isolated and corrected.

It is my humble little opinion that the threat of being damped for 
some period of time is a great hammer to hold over network operator's 
heads.  I think it's a 'good thing(tm)' for automatic penalties to go 
in to effect for those who are irresponsible with the global routing 
table.  Even if that means that though no fault of my own, one of my 
transit lines flaps, and gets me somewhat damped for an hour.

-Jerry