4-Byte AS Number soon to come?

Tue Aug 23 09:53:17 UTC 2005

Hi,

The IDR draft is awaiting implementation report. There are apparently 
two implementations, one with field deployment, which suffices to 
move the draft forward. I happen to have one concern about the draft, 
and I'd like to ask on NANOG to find out whether or not my concern is 
of actual operational significance (ie significant enough to revise 
the draft and start again on implementations):

How important is the operational use of BGP protocol analysers?

Is it common or uncommon to fire up 'ethereal' or 'tcpdump' to debug 
a BGP problem?

Would it be problematic to have to either a) clear sessions for your 
analyser to fully understand the BGP stream or b) tell your analyser 
whether the flow uses 2 or 4 byte ASNs?

Do you ever have an operational need to watch several BGP flows at 
the same time?

Are there any other operational uses for tools which *passively* read 
BGP besides debug? Eg, passive gathering of BGP data, a 'BGP IDS'? 
Are these used at all?

Essentially, this draft as it stands is going to make it difficult to 
observe and comprehend BGP AS_PATH without either human intervention 
or restart of the session(s) concerned. A guage how much of a problem 
this would be in real-life (if any problem at all?) would be useful 
in determining whether it's worth lobbying to change the draft.

Thanks.

regards,
-- 
Paul Jakma	paul at clubi.ie	paul at jakma.org	Key ID: 64A2FF6A
Fortune:
Piece of cake!
 		-- G.S. Koblas