Does anyone know if ANS, digex, mci etc.
provide communities that encompass their internal/customer routes?
Can you be a little more precise? Most providers probably use
communities to tag subsets of the routes they carry, and some set of
those communities, either through inclusion or exclusion, almost
certainly describes the set of customer routes carried by that
provider. (I'm sure this can be stated more clearly.) GTE certainly
does, I'm pretty sure MCI still does, etc.
Now, will we "provide" these communities? Do you mean send-community
to a customer? To a peer? Many of a provider's internal communities
would be at best irrelevant and at worst potentially harmful in the
context of another AS's policy. With no good way to delete
such communities while preserving communities that describe their
customer base (and ixnay on "match community... set community") why
would a provider want to send all community tags to either a customer
or a peer?
Another question is, "Why do you want this info?" Taking full transit
routes from a provider and trying to set localpref or MED based on
whether the destination is a customer or peer network? If you are
taking transit, there are good arguments for *not* running
default-free.
If certain ones don't, is there any reason that they
have against such a community?
See above. Some/most providers can probably be convinced to send
community-tagged routes to customers (hey, the customer's not *always*
wrong, and it depends on how much proprietary configuration info a
provider is worried about conveying -- of course, I find this last
amounts to mostly hogwash). Nobody's going to send them to peer
networks.
Can you be a little more precise? Most providers probably use
communities to tag subsets of the routes they carry, and some set of
those communities, either through inclusion or exclusion, almost
certainly describes the set of customer routes carried by that
provider. (I'm sure this can be stated more clearly.) GTE certainly
does, I'm pretty sure MCI still does, etc.
What the basic question involved was whether providers have
some sort of community in place to distribute to customers
concerning their customer/internal routes. Also, it would be
nice if the provider would distribute this information to the
customer. Therefore, I was wondering which providers
had such communities and which providers were willing
to distribute said communities to customers.
Another question is, "Why do you want this info?" Taking full transit
routes from a provider and trying to set localpref or MED based on
whether the destination is a customer or peer network? If you are
taking transit, there are good arguments for *not* running
default-free.
It would seem to me to be helpful when coming up with
policy to route traffic bound for internal/customer
networks of an upstream to that upstream (unless that link
is down). Sometimes the path selection does not allow
this and we are forced to use foolish kludges like
as path prepending and other neanderthalic clubbings.
Bradley Reynolds
brad@iagnet.net
No Inflated Title
Internet Access Group
Can you be a little more precise? Most providers probably use
communities to tag subsets of the routes they carry, and some set of
those communities, either through inclusion or exclusion, almost
certainly describes the set of customer routes carried by that
provider. (I'm sure this can be stated more clearly.) GTE certainly
does, I'm pretty sure MCI still does, etc.
You are correct.
http://infopage.mci.net/Routing/communities.html
What the basic question involved was whether providers have
some sort of community in place to distribute to customers
concerning their customer/internal routes. Also, it would be
nice if the provider would distribute this information to the
customer. Therefore, I was wondering which providers
had such communities and which providers were willing
to distribute said communities to customers.
Another question is, "Why do you want this info?" Taking full transit
routes from a provider and trying to set localpref or MED based on
whether the destination is a customer or peer network? If you are
taking transit, there are good arguments for *not* running
default-free.
It would seem to me to be helpful when coming up with
policy to route traffic bound for internal/customer
networks of an upstream to that upstream (unless that link
is down). Sometimes the path selection does not allow
this and we are forced to use foolish kludges like
as path prepending and other neanderthalic clubbings.
MCI offers announcemnets of:
Backbone Routes
Customer Routes
Customer Routes - w/MED
Full Routes
Full Routes - w/MED
For information on multihoming to MCI:
http://infopage.mci.net/Routing/mhmci.html
For information on mulitihoming to MCI and another provider:
http://infopage.mci.net/Routing/mhp.html
Jim Farrar
jfarrar@mci.net
The route object found via 'whois -h whois.ripe.net
AS1755' may serve as a useful case study for people
interested in using communities to influence routing
policy.
Sean.
P.S.: whois.ra.net will work too for those of you with poor
connectivity to Europe or scratching your heads
about why whois.ripe.net doesn't seem to work right now...
Here is the kicker: How about Full Routes with Backbone and Customer
Routes tagged with a community denoting their status?
Bradley