RE: Non-ISP companies multi-homing?

[root () gannett com]

On Thu, 24 Jul 1997, Howard C. Berkowitz wrote:

> Interesting approach.  In general, the ISPs I know would be reluctant to
> run iBGP with a customer, unless they had total control of all BGP
> speakers.  If I understand you correctly, the enterprise would have to tag
> its advertisements to the second ISP with the ASN of the first, since the
> enterprise doesn't have its own.  Again, I think most ISPs would be
> reluctant to give up this amount of control.

I think most of the companies running redundant links now have their own 
address space and ASN.  We got our primary address blocks back when a 
company could still do that.  I think there's going to have to be some 
way to address that with semi-portable AS' in the near future though, as 
more criticality transitions to the Net.  

That, or people will start buying up service providers to get address blocks, 
then they'll own the routers, and work out their iBGP issues "internally".  
Not that that works for smaller companies who want it, but if you're a 
multi-billion dollar corporation, it's an option (yes, it should scare you).

I know at least one tier 1 has started offering seperate wireline into 
different NAPs in the DC area, which is about as good as you can get without
going to two providers.  They want a lot of money for it though, and the 
gains of a second provider are much more cost-effective from a strict 
redundancy standpoint.  

I don't know how we can get a combination of aggragate routing and 
multi-homing to scale correctly, but I think it's becomming more 
important that we do so.

Paul
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Paul D. Robertson
gatekeeper () gannett com