Is it normal for your provider to withhold BGP peering info until the night of the cut?

Fri Jan 22 01:05:02 UTC 2016

On 1/21/2016 15:33, Kraig Beahn wrote:
> "This carrier said that they don't provide this until the night of the
> cut." / "Is this a common SOP nowadays?" - Not in our experience.
>
> On Thu, Jan 21, 2016 at 4:26 PM, c b <bz_siege_01 at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> We have 4 full-peering providers between two data centers. Our accounting
>> people did some shopping and found that there was a competitor who came in
>> substantially lower this year and leadership decided to swap our most
>> expensive circuit to the new carrier.
>> (I don't know what etiquette is, so I won't name the carrier... but it's a
>> well-known name)
>> Anyways, we were preparing for the circuit cutover and asked for the BGP
>> peering info up front like we normally do. This carrier said that they
>> don't provide this until the night of the cut. Now, we've done this 5 or 6
>> times over the years with all of our other carriers and this is the first
>> one to ever do this. We even escalated to our account manager and they
>> still won't provide it.
>> I know it's not a huge deal, but life is so much easier when you can
>> prestage your cut and rollback commands. In fact, our internal Change
>> Management process mandates peer review all proposed config changes and now
>> we have to explain why some lines say TBD!
>> Is this a common SOP nowadays? Anyone care to explain why they wouldn't
>> just provide it ahead of time?
>> Thanks in advance.
>> CWB
>

I have not been following this thread closely, but I'll bet I klnow why 
the new vendor is cheaper.

I have this theory that says accounting may not be the best place for 
technical OR engineering decision making (it destroyed the company I 
worked for for many years).

My theory (see the scientific usage of the word) is that "cheapest" is 
rarely "best" in any dimension INCLUDING "total cost".

-- 
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)