Upstream BGP community support

Sat Oct 31 20:37:03 UTC 2009

Hi,

Quick question: Would you buy transit from someone who does not
support BGP communities?

Here is the story:

My company is pushing several GBit/s through various upstream
providers. We have reached the point where we rely on BGP communitiy
support, especially communities that can be sent to the upstream to
change the way he announces our prefixes to his peers/transits.

While most decent upstream providers support this kind of traffic
engineering, one of them refuses to send and accept BGP communities. I
tried to contact my upstream several times through different channels
to get some background as to why they would not be able to provide us
this service, but all we get is tickets that get closed without an
answer. Management itself does not seem to bother either.

Is this normal or is it too much to ask for BGP communities from an
upstream who has points of presence in the US, Europe and Asia?

Andy