[NANOG] Multihoming for small frys?

Wed May 21 20:29:28 UTC 2008

William Herrin wrote:

> I have a client who needs to multihome with multiple vendors for
> reliability purposes, currently in the Northern Virginia area and
> later on with a fail-over site, probably in Hawaii. They have only a
> very modest need for bandwidth and addresses (think: T1's and a few
> dozen servers) but they have to have BGP multihoming and can afford to
> pay for it.

Now, I have a question about this...  Is the customer using the sites 
for redundancy, and will have both upstream providers in each site?

Honestly, a small operation like this may be better served by multiple 
connections to the same provider.  Such a setup can usually be done to 
multiple routers, through redundant circuit paths, and done at 
substantially less cost that two different providers.  And, in my 
experience, using one provider can often be more reliable than multiple 
providers, given how many providers transport facilities ride the same 
fiber path, and sometimes the same bundle.

  -Sean