Is multihoming hard? [was: DNS amplification]

Wed Mar 20 15:25:59 UTC 2013

On Mar 20, 2013, at 7:25 AM, Owen DeLong <owen at delong.com> wrote:

>> And please don't reply with "then why can't I run BGP on my [cable|DSL|etc.] link?" Broadband providers are not trying to throttle growth by not allowing grandma to do BGP, and swapping to LISP or anything else won't change that.
> 
> Sure they are. If they weren't, it would be relatively straight forward to add the necessary options to DHCP for a minimal (accept default, advertise local) BGP configuration and it would be quite simple for CPE router manufacturers to incorporate those capabilities.
> 
> The problem is BGP doesn't scale to that level and everyone knows it, so, we limit growth by not allowing it to be a possibility.

I suspect it has nothing to do with the scaling properties of 
routing tables and everything to do with customer support costs.

The metrics associated with broadband services are quite daunting;
i.e. costs from a  single technical customer support call can exceed 
the entire expected profit over the typical customer contract period...

In such circumstances, you really don't want any quantity of residential 
customers running BGP, as it increases the probability of customer care
calls.  It's only at a different revenue point (i.e. "small-business 
service") that it becomes viable.

FYI,
/John