RIPE "Golden Networks" Document ID - 229/210/178

Thu Sep 2 22:29:13 UTC 2004

Hi Randy,

On Sep 2, 2004, at 2:58 PM, Randy Bush wrote:

>
>> If you don't implement ripe-229, why not?
>
> because the golden address space stuff is stupid
>

OK. I'll bite...

Given Network A, which has "golden network" content behind it as 
described by the RIPE paper (root and tld data), if the network has 
some combination of events that result in all of their announcements to 
you being dampened by you, your users can't get "there". For grin's, 
let's say we're talking about .foo, one of the larger gtld's.

You are absolutely right in suggesting that .foo has to get its act 
together. You may even tell your users that. But you'll be telling 
every single one of them, because every single one of them is going to 
attempt to resolve .foo domain names during the hour you have them 
dampened. And your cost in dealing with those support calls will 
probably outweigh the benefits of dampening .foo.

I am polling networks so that I can get an idea of who handles their 
network this way, and who doesn't. I don't know if it is stupid or not, 
because I don't know enough about the subject yet. What I do know is 
that dampening these special networks with long prefixes already causes 
real-world problems. In many cases, the pain is felt by networks who 
may have a policy of not dampening, but are downstream of a major 
network that *does* dampen aggressively. Unless they're looking at the 
routing announcement and withdrawal data and analyzing it, they may 
never realize why their support infrastructure was overwhelmed. And 
Jared has a good point - modern BFR's *can* handle lots of flaps 
without breaking a sweat so maybe dampening aggressively, or even at 
all, may be an artifact whose time has gone.

Notwithstanding the normal response of "If what is on that network is 
broken, let them fix it" which is tantamount to cutting off your nose 
to spite your face, saying it is stupid is more of a generalization and 
opinion, but doesn't really give reasons as to why it is stupid, so it 
really has no real value. What are the reasons you think (or know) it 
is *stupid*? And what is the solution technically, not to include "let 
them fix it - I'm in the right, so I'm not going to do anything".

Thanks
/rlj