Re: BGP over satellite link

[Brian Candler <B.Candler at pobox.com>]

On Sun, Apr 06, 2003 at 11:41:37AM -0700, Joe Joe wrote:
>    interface Ethernet0/0
>     description Connection to Upstream
>     ip address 213.118.132.1 255.255.255.252

Is that really a connection to your upstream? Or is the comment wrong?

Is anything else connected to that ethernet port, on 213.118.132.2 ?

Incidentally, those addresses appear to be allocated by your provider: whois
says they belong to Telenet Operaties N.V. in Belgium, and the route on the
Internet is for the aggregate 213.118.0.0/15

Have you discussed routing policy with your proposed second provider? If you
wish to continue using the same IP range then they will need to agree to
announce your more specific route which belongs to a different ISP.

If you are intending to try and balance traffic between your two links then
this could cause you problems; you will need to get your primary provider to
announce the more specific route as well, otherwise almost *all* traffic
will come down your secondary link. Remember the rule that 'most specific
route wins'

You will save yourself trouble in the long term if you get your own
provider-independent address space. To do this you will need to become a
member of a registry; which one depends on exactly where you are located.
Until AfriNIC takes off you will probably need to join RIPE or ARIN. Last
time I looked, RIPE's membership fee was around 2,000 Euros per year. For
that you get your own PI netblock (probably a /20) which you can announce
via multiple providers, plus access to RIPE assistance and training in
running your own local internet registry. The cost is probably small
compared to your satellite links, and will allow you to grow much more
easily.

I will warn you now, from personal experience, that balancing incoming
traffic between two links to two different providers is extremely difficult.
You should expect only a very coarse degree of control. Let's say it turns
out that 1/4 of your traffic comes down one link and 3/4 down the other;
make one change and you may find 3/4 coming down the first link and 1/4 down
the other. This probably won't worry you too much as long as your provider
lets you buy additional bandwidth in chunks of say 64K; as one pipe fills
you just buy additional bandwidth on that pipe, rather than attempting to
balance some traffic onto the other link. In my case I was stuck with 2 x
34M to one provider and 1 x 34M to the other, and the business was not
prepared to buy a fourth 34M !

Regards,

Brian.

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