RE: Cogent service

[David Schwartz <davids () webmaster com>]

On Sun, 22 Sep 2002 23:16:20 -0400 (EDT), jlewis () lewis org wrote:

> What are these 'special needs' people keep mentioning?  What special needs
> might you have of your transit providers?

        It's hard to generally categorize special needs because they're special. I
can give you an example of a special need, but it hardly typifies all the
special needs.

        One example of a special need would be a case where you get a 100Mbps
connection from a transit provider and you don't use BGP. They normally
assign two IPs, one to each end of the link. You want to connect the link to
a switch and number two routers inside the link using HSRP for which router
they send your traffic to.

        Another case might be where you get 2 100Mbps links and you want both
failover and load sharing. You might want them to allow a setup where each of
the two links goes to two routers (through switches) such that either router
can use either link under normal conditions. This way you're protected
against failure of either router, either link, and under normal conditions
can get the full use of both. This may require configuration changes on their
end (such as the subnet mask of the block the link is numbered with.)

        What I think you don't realize is how precisely Cogent specifies everything.
Anything other than exactly their default configuration is a special need
they won't do.

        DS