request for help w/ ATT and terminology

Thu Jan 17 19:46:11 UTC 2008

Leo is referring to RFC 2270.  Providers can get an ASN to use for 
customers who want to be multihomed only to them.  It's likely ATT has 
such an ASN that you could use.

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2270.txt

--Heather

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
  Heather Schiller
  Customer Security
  IP Address Management
  1.800.900.0241
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Leo Bicknell wrote:
> Some networks (of note, the larger ones) have registered a "customer
> ASN".  The idea is that networks advertised from their backbone ASN
> should only be the ones they own, and all customers who have no ASN
> use the customer ASN to originate their block.  In most cases the
> contract prohibits using the customer ASN with another provider;
> it is only to be used to single home to the one network.
> 
> I have no personal experience with AT&T in this configuration, but
> with several other networks they would prefer an eBGP session where
> they send you a default and you send them your prefix using the ASN
> they assign.  Aside from keeping the prefixes segregated by ASN it
> also makes the routing policy a lot simpler.  Typically things
> announced by the backbone ASN may appear in prefix lists across the
> network, while the customer ASN is "just another session".
> 
> One of the more interesting "big network" problems is the front
> line support tend to not be creative thinkers, and also tend to
> believe their internal terminology is industry standard speak.  This
> can make it difficult to get what you want.
> 