Follow up to previous post regarding SAAVIS

Wed Aug 12 21:45:28 UTC 2009

On Wed, 12 Aug 2009 16:57:07 -0400, Jared Mauch <jared at puck.nether.net>  
wrote:
> I've come to the conclusion that if someone put a nice web2.0+ interface  
> on creating and managing these objects it would be a lot easier.
>
> If there were a customer portal where you could visit to say "update my  
> prefix-list/acl to include the following new prefix(es), and push the  
> change /now/" I presume that would drive customer utilization of these  
> services and allow people to manage things "better".

That's fine... until you learn the hard way 9 times out of 10, the person  
heading to such a thing is a clueless moron.  As much as it is a pain in  
the rear, having *people* proofing and editing the BGP configuration is  
far less work than creating the AI needed to keep idiots from doing  
idiotic things.

I've never worked for any of the tier-1 beasts, but I have had to manage  
dozens of customer BGP sessions. Over a decade, I never dealt with a  
clueful customer... we cannot announce address space that doesn't belong  
to you; you cannot announce *our* address space to other ISPs; you have  
one f'ing link, why do you need BGP? (note: never actually ask that  
question or mute your phone immediately after asking.)

How often do your prefixes change?  In my experience adding new netblocks  
and/or customers, taking a few weeks to get things setup wasn't a problem;  
it'd take that long to get their connection turned up. (and if they were  
talking about BGP, sales would be talking to us before the contract was  
signed.)

--Ricky