BGP Failover Question

Tue Feb 22 18:54:06 UTC 2011

Funny, I was just at your IPv6 sight this morning while researching
multihoming scenarios. "That name sounds familiar....."

 -Hammer-

"I was a normal American nerd."
-Jack Herer

On Tue, Feb 22, 2011 at 12:52 PM, Hammer <bhmccie at gmail.com> wrote:

> I agree. But swapping providers is not the default answer in some
> environments. I work in an enterprise with multiple GE circuits from
> multiple providers to the Internet. The lead time on calling up a different
> carrier and saying "I need a gigabit connection to the Internet" would
> probably be 90-120 days. And then you get to go thru the
> contracts/negotiations and MSAs. You don't just flip. In smaller operations
> I understand. But I was simply saying that it's not always that easy. If I
> went to my boss and said one of our carriers sucks and we should dump them
> he would just laugh and throw me out.
>
> 1. What are the SLAs with the carrier in question? Do you have them clearly
> defined? Are they out of SLA? If so, what compensation is entitled based on
> violation of said SLA?
>
> 2. What trending are you doing to document the failures in SLA of the
> carrier in question? Do we have a documented pattern of poor performence by
> using that trending?
>
> 3. What are our contractual or legal options based on items 1 and 2?
>
> 4. Don't forget about the Layer8 (political) factor. If your telco manager
> is buddies with the carrier then you have to double your documentation
> against them. Some companies spend tens of millions a month on circuits. You
> better be ready to justify yourself.
>
>
>  -Hammer-
>
> "I was a normal American nerd."
> -Jack Herer
>
>
>
>
>
>   On Tue, Feb 22, 2011 at 12:38 PM, Owen DeLong <owen at delong.com> wrote:
>
>> Assuming that he has provider independent space (why run full BGP feeds if
>> you
>> are not multihomed?), then, actually it's about on par and less disruptive
>> in
>> general. Add new provider, wait a  day or two, then disconnect old
>> provider.
>>
>> If he's using provider assigned space, then, the big hurdle is switching
>> to provider
>> independent (requires a renumber), but, that's a good idea for a variety
>> of reasons.
>>
>> I would hardly call the type and frequency of outages described a "whim"
>> when
>> using that as a reason to change providers. Sounds like he is suffering
>> severe impact to his business.
>>
>> Owen
>>
>> On Feb 22, 2011, at 10:15 AM, Hammer wrote:
>>
>> > I'm not argueing that at all. But it wasn't relevent to the question at
>> > hand. And depending on the scale of your business dumping providers is
>> not
>> > something done on a whim. It's not like your fed up with DSL and want to
>> > convert to Cable.
>> >
>> >
>> > -Hammer-
>> >
>> > "I was a normal American nerd."
>> > -Jack Herer
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > On Tue, Feb 22, 2011 at 12:11 PM, Bret Clark <bclark at spectraaccess.com
>> >wrote:
>> >
>> >> On 02/22/2011 12:23 PM, Hammer wrote:
>> >>
>> >>> As Max stated, you can set triggers based on thresholds that are
>> monitered
>> >>> via multiple methods in Cisco IOS. That way you could force the route
>> down
>> >>> dynamically. There's always a risk when letting the machines do the
>> >>> thinking
>> >>> but this would help in situations like this. Can't speak for other
>> vendors
>> >>> but I'm sure the features are similar.
>> >>>
>> >>> Well as someone else stated, if an upstream provider can't provide BGP
>> >> reliably then it's time to give them the boot. Once in a year, okay,
>> but
>> >> beyond that, then it's time to read riot act with that provider.
>> >> Bret
>> >>
>> >>
>>
>>
>