Quick BGP peering question

Wed Jan 3 17:31:35 UTC 2007

James Blessing wrote:
> Very simply : Would you accept traffic from a customer who insists on sending 0
> prefixes across a BGP session?
> 

I just ran through a related issue with one of my upstream peers. It appears 
that they have a RPF strictly enforced policy, yet during the process of 
renumbering a customer of a customer from another ISPs space, they were wanting 
to throw all traffic (our IPs and the other provider's) out to us.

It comes down to a simple question of policy, and if you are going to mandate 
how your customers route proper, valid traffic. I about pulled the plug in my 
situation, but finally got it sorted out. Thank goodness some routers can allow 
exceptions to RPF and other providers just use ACLs instead.

0 prefixes is no different than partial prefixes. Asymmetric routing should not 
be a crime on the Internet because "I don't like it" or "but basic RPF is easier 
and you're doing something funky anyways".

Jack Bates