Super-Networking Blog

So I have been doing BGP on Cisco routers for about 6 years or so, it is a really good way of having a redundant ISP connection. Sure it can be a pain to get it setup as some ISPs take a while to get the settings right but once it is setup and tested normally it works like a charm. Typically I run the 2 ISP connections in an active/standby fashion instead of load sharing. This allows you to get a better rate on the backup connection as long as you don’t use them on a regular basis. Not using both connections is easier said then done though, when you setup BGP by default it will choose the best route for the connection so it will use both connections. In the past I have done my best to fix this problem by weighting the connections both in and out so I can choose the best path for outgoing connections and advertise the best path for incoming connections. Doing it in this manner works pretty well but their is always some traffic on the incoming side of the redudnant ISP for destinations that are directly connected to that ISP.

I have never had a problem with this lower amount of traffic before from that 2nd ISP but I was tasked recently with finding a way to bring that traffic down to almost zero. What I found was BGP Conditional Advertisement Feature that Cisco has. I had never heard of this before but sounds like the perfect solution to my problem. Basically what this feature does is allow you to setup a conditional BGP advertisement to the 2nd ISP connection. In this condition you put a route or some other dynamic information you recieve from ISP 1 and your normal advertisments for ISP 2. If this condition sees the information you specified from ISP 1 it will withhold the advertisements from ISP 2. If the information from ISP 1 goes away the condition will then advertise to ISP 2. I have not put this in place yet as I am still looking into aspects of putting it in place. This might cause a longer outage when ISP 1 fails but will solve the problem of incoming traffic on ISP 2 because if I am not advertising at all out ISP 2 I can’t get any traffic from them.

Here is a document on how to configure this feature on you Cisco Router.

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/tech/tk365/technologies_configuration_example09186a0080094309.shtml

This story brought to you by Wired

“The Federal Trade Commission issued a staff report Wednesday on Net Neutrality, coming firmly down in the wait-and-see-if-ISPs-begin-acting-badly camp, cautioning lawmakers to be careful about creating rules that interfere with competition.

The FTC’s Internet Access Task Force’s report, which the five-member commission approved unanimously, describes the debate, the internet’s architecture and the issues around competition in broadband.

Based on what we have learned through our examination of broadband connectivity issues and our experience with antitrust and consumer protection issues more generally, we recommend that policy makers proceed with caution in evaluating proposals to enact regulation in the area of broadband Internet access. The primary reason for caution is simply that we do not know what the net effects of potential conduct by broadband providers will be on all consumers, including, among other things, the prices that consumers may pay for Internet access, the quality of Internet access and other services that will be offered, and the choices of content and applications that may be available to consumers in the marketplace.

Proponents of Net Neutrality want federal regulators or lawmakers to prohibit Internet Service Providers, which are increasingly offering their own content and services such as internet telephony from degrading their competitor’s traffic — whether that be Vonage or YouTube.  They also fear that ISPs will divy up their pipes into fast lanes and slow lanes and charge content providers to get into the fast lane.  Opponents of Net Neutrality, which include free marketers and ISPs, argue that people will benefit from dedicated lines for important traffic and regulations will stymie investment into fatter internet pipes.

The FTC’s conclusion is that they just don’t know:

Even assuming discrimination against content or applications providers took place, moreover, there remains the question � also unanswerable in the abstract � whether such discrimination would be harmful, on balance, to consumer welfare. For example, such discrimination may facilitate product differentiation, such as the provision of Internet access services designed specifically for certain population segments or other audiences with specialized preferences.

Such prioritization may provide benefits to broadband providers, content and applications providers, and end users. Prioritization may allocate resources to their highest-valued uses by, for example, allowing content and applications providers that value higher-quality transmission services, such as VoIP or online gaming providers, to pay broadband providers for such services.

Prioritization may enable broadband providers to obtain income streams from content and applications providers and other users of broadband networks besides the broadband providers� own customers, resulting in increased investment and innovation in such networks. Prioritization may aid innovation in applications or content, such as streaming video and other real-time applications, that require higher-quality transmission to operate effectively. Prioritization may provide a dimension for both content and applications providers and broadband providers to differentiate their offerings, to the benefit of competition and consumers. Prioritization also may lower prices for less affluent end users, whose access fees could be partially subsidized by prioritization revenues, much like advertising-supported e-mail services now provide free e-mail accounts.

But on the other hand the commission says :

Prioritization could enable exclusive deals for priority that, if combined with inadequate delivery of non-priority data, would hinder the traditional ability of every end user to reach every content and applications provider through a single Internet access agreement. As with data discrimination, we are unable to determine in the abstract the net effect on consumer welfare of the various forms of data prioritization that may be pursued in the marketplace.

But it’s clear from the 170 page report (.pdf) that the FTC has no immediate plans to step in on its own, which likely makes one side of this debate happy.”

If you want to take a quite look at the overall health of the major ISP backbones I found the site for you. I ran across it the other day and it is pretty sweet. Too bad the ISP my company is on isn’t listed but all of the big dog ISPs are.

Internet Health Report