> I welcome any further questions about PAIX's health or future. [...]
Why no optional MLPA like AADS? [...]
we had one at first. after a few years of approximately no signatories,
we stopped trying. my own experience is that bilaterals are more useful
for engineering purposes and that multilaterals are kind of swampy. but
if there's interest, we'll find the old paperwork and shuffle it anew.
> Why no optional MLPA like AADS? [...]
we had one at first. after a few years of approximately no signatories,
we stopped trying. my own experience is that bilaterals are more useful
for engineering purposes and that multilaterals are kind of swampy.
One BGP session instead of dozens is more convenient. Maybe not more
useful for engineering, but certainly less work than negotiating and
configuring a bunch of sessions for bilateral peering.
For smaller ISPs like mine, knowing in advance that you won't get snubbed
for peering after connecting to an exchange is the big attraction. Given
the dozens of signatories on the AADS MLPA, it looks like they can be
quite popular.
-Ralph
I think you'll find that the MLPA at AADS just means that you can get
peering with all the people who have signed up, without negotiating them
all seperately. You still need to setup individual BGP sessions to each
of them.
Simon
Strictly speaking, I don't think a route-server is required to
multilaterally peer, but they certainly help. However, there are a couple
of big catches, particularly on an ATM or similar switching fabric:
1) One or two sessions, one or two VCs...if they go down, you will
lose all your peering at that site.
2) The possibility of blackholing traffic to a peer who you have
a downed VC to, but who is still advertising their prefixes to
the route server.
Additionally, quality of peering does not necessarily correlate
to quantity of peering. I'm not going to claim that it's a bad thing
to peer with a large number of typically smaller providers, but they
don't always account for a statistically signifigant portion of your
traffic. If you're going to have to negotiate bilateral agreements to
cover the bulk of your peering traffic, why not consistantly negotiate
bilateral agreements?
--msa
traffic. If you're going to have to negotiate bilateral agreements to
cover the bulk of your peering traffic, why not consistantly negotiate
bilateral agreements?
Randy (Group Telecom) snubbed me when I asked to peer at TorIX. Group
Telecom is on the AADS MLPA. AT&T Canada has a tough policy re peering as
well, and is on the AADS MLPA. I'm sure there are others among the AADS
MLPA signatories that would refuse bilateral peering if I approached them.
-Ralph
Ralph,
Your false assumption is that any of these folks would sign a MLPA at a
new or existing peering point, where such an agreement did not already
exist. The major reason most of these guys are on the AADS MLPA is that
they don't want to Unsign it. In other words, it's a done deal, a fact
on the ground, not something they care to revise - something historic,
not current.
Even if there was an MLPA at PAIX, introduced tomorrow, there is
vanishingly small chance that anyone would sign up. For that matter, in
many ways MLPAs are counterintuitive to the very idea of peering,
because there is no mechanism to ensure that both partners in any given
relationship are peers, in the sense of size, network, traffic balance,
etc. That is why most folks prefer BLPAs these days - it allows you to
be much pickier about who you peer with, and ensure they are a proper
counterpart to your network.
- Daniel Golding
Not to mention many of the signatories will not set up peering with you even if you sign the MPLA unless you "qualify" for peering bilaterally.
IOW: They break the MPLA "contract".