Small guys with BGP issues

Richard A Steenbergen ras at e-gerbil.net
Mon Nov 2 06:00:59 UTC 2009


On Mon, Nov 02, 2009 at 12:42:51AM -0500, Steve Bertrand wrote:
> This isn't just my DSL provider, its a business class connection
> provider who also happens to provide my (hrm.. our) primary Internet
> connection.
> 
> Are you going to teach me something with a clue bat, or are you going
> to beat me to death with the specifics that each prong of a fork
> carries?

Sure, I'll give it a brief shot... Some Internet connections are simply
not designed to support customer BGP. When someone says "business class
service" over cable or DSL, typically what they're talking about is
"we'll route your calls to a slightly higher class call center", and
"we'll provide you with 5 e-mail addresses/IPs and 50MB of hosting for
your website instead of just the usual 1 email and 1 dynamic IP".

The DSL gear may very well not be able to speak BGP to a customer at
all. Each provider gets to decide what service they do and don't want to
sell, and your provider has clearly decided they don't want to sell you
BGP. From the providers' point of view, I'm sure this makes perfect
sense. I'd love to get Comcast to speak BGP to my cable modem, but I
have absolutely no delusions that they will ever do so. There is more
than likely nothing you're going to be able to do about it, and the more
you complain about it like this the more likely they are to move you
into the "this guy is a nut and we don't want your business at all"
category.

If you don't like the service you're getting, vote with your money and
buy from someone else. This is quite simply not a NANOG issue, but in 
the interests of being helpful the best advice I can give you is this:

"Your request is unreasonable, and you should adjust your expectations 
that you'll ever get it from the service you are purchasing".

Sorry if that's not the answer you want. :)

-- 
Richard A Steenbergen <ras at e-gerbil.net>       http://www.e-gerbil.net/ras
GPG Key ID: 0xF8B12CBC (7535 7F59 8204 ED1F CC1C 53AF 4C41 5ECA F8B1 2CBC)




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