Open Source BGP Route Optimization?

Thu May 27 22:27:48 UTC 2004

At first I wasn't sure what a "route optimizer" was supposed to do --
the term is rather generic and could have a lot of different
interpretations.

A multi-path traffic balancing solution in the style of Cisco's OER has
to be tightly integrated with the routing infrastructure.  Specifically,
it needs first hand BGP peer data in order to work reliably.  There will
be a number of cases where an add-on solution might be able to improve on
certain things, but there is one major hurdle: a BGP speaker only forwards
its own best paths, so an add-on analyzer might well never learn about
alternative paths.  The only way for any implementation to reliably learn
(all) alternative paths and otherwise maintain routing integrity is by
receiving BGP data first hand, ie directly peer with transit providers
and other peers.

Best,

  -- Per