Two BGP peering sessions on single Comcast Fiber Connection?

Thu Oct 13 19:42:37 UTC 2016

Whenever we set up a bgp peer we do that to minimize downtime when doing
maint. It's hit or miss. HE required a second physicall connection NTT was
more than accommodating.

On Oct 13, 2016 15:06, "Mike Poublon" <mpoublon at secantnet.net> wrote:

> I started a thread around the same topic back on 10/16 of 2014. A Comcast
> engineer (who ultimately spoke to the national product manager) came back
> after discussing and said the same thing "We don't support that". I got a
> slightly longer explanation of:
>
> --------------------------------------------
>
> In a nutshell, when we design a product we do it to accommodate the most
> typical customer cases.
> Given that the design includes a single fiber path and thus the fiber path
> and device that terminates on either end each are a single point of
> failure, adding extra BGP sessions doesn’t seem to add value in the typical
> failure scenarios.  In order to achieve the simplest and most scalable
> solution to address the market, we rely on narrowing the possible
> combinations of parameters.
>
> --------------------------------------------
>
> I explained to them that their interpretation prevents me from being able
> to do concurrent maintenance on my side (single router reboot/upgrade,
> etc). Never got anywhere with it though.
>
> I'm still interested in having this set up, but have given up on it ever
> really coming to reality. Luckily ALL of my other providers were more than
> happy to set up an extra session.
>
> If anyone from Comcast is listening, there is customer demand for this.
> It's not about making it better for Comcast, it's about allowing customers
> to have more flexibility.
>
> Mike Poublon
>
> /Senior Datacenter Network Engineer/
>
> *Secant Technologies*
>
> 6395 Technology Ave. Suite A
>
> Kalamazoo, MI 49009
>
> On 10/13/2016 1:48 PM, rar wrote:
>
>> After a many month wait, we were ready to turn up our BGP peering
>> sessions on a new Comcast fiber connection.
>>
>> With our other providers (Level 3 and Verizon) we have edge routers that
>> directly connect between the provider's on premise connection and our
>> primary and a backup core routers.  Each core router has a multihop BGP
>> session with the provider's BGP router.  The goal is to keep the single BGP
>> router from being a single point of failure.
>>
>> Comcast said they could not support two separate BGP peering sessions on
>> the same circuit.  Does anyone have any counter examples?  We used to have
>> this setup with Comcast 5+ years ago, but now they say they can't support
>> it.
>>
>>
>> Bob Roswell
>> broswell at syssrc.com<mailto:broswell at syssrc.com>
>> 410-771-5544 ext 4336
>>
>> Computer Museum Highlights<http://museum.syssrc.com/>
>>
>>
>