Feedback on providers who offer communities that restrict route propagation

Tue Sep 5 21:23:56 UTC 2006

David Ulevitch schrieb:
> My questions are thus:

As a long term customer of AS702 UUnet / Worldcom / MCI / Verizon
Business I have some experience using their community support documented
here: http://www.verizonbusiness.com/uk/customer/bgp/

I guess other carrier have similar community support (I can tell that
1239, 1299 and 3549 do have, but I don't have public links).

> 1) I'd this to find out how reliable it is/was (were your routes ever
> leaked)?

It worked, but it has to be used carefully.

> 2) How effective it is/was (did it accomplish your goals)?

Partly. You can control mainly inbound traffic, for instance forcing
traffic which normally flows from "Incumbent" -> 702 -> "You" a longer
way like "Incumbent" -> 701 -> 702 -> "You". Which of course gives much
longer latency, and it forces "Incumbent" to pay traffic towards 701,
while traffic towards 702 would be free peering.

However, in my case, traffic from "Incumbent" -> "You" wasn't
considerable, but much more "You" -> "Incumbent", read outbound traffic.
There is no community setting to force 702 using the longer path via
701. 702 will always drop the hot potato on the nearest exit (peering 
port towards incumbent).

> 3) Advice you might have for someone who is considering doing this?
> Providers to shy away from?  Providers who are pretty good?

Play around with an unused / not yet used prefix (not a more specific)
to find out the behaviour with remote LG etc. before using it in production.

HTH,
Fredy