nanog mailing list archives

Re: Is it time to abandon bogon prefix filters?


From: "Steven M. Bellovin" <smb () cs columbia edu>
Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2008 12:17:36 -0400

On Fri, 15 Aug 2008 08:56:27 -0700
Randy Bush <randy () psg com> wrote:

Not sure what you mean by this, but the painful reality is that most
stuff, once deployed, gets promptly forgotten about, much the same
as you might ignore a wall wart power supply under your desk until
it started smelling funny or stopped delivering electricity.  Thus,
I contend that one's routers should be configured to avoid ticking
time bombs.

and i am saying that you should use a router configuration *system*
that avoids ticking time bombs.  no router should be neglected and
unloved.

That, I think, is why he distinguished between routers run by "highly
clueful people" and routers run by others.  I think we all agree on
your basic point; it's just that too many people aren't clueful enough
to realize that they even have a problem, let alone know how to solve
it.  (Of course, you and I both have a background in programming
languages and compilers, which is why we naturally think of router
configurations as a form of assembler language that only a compiler
should every emit.)


                --Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb


Current thread: