Re: Lazy Engineers and Viable Excuses

[Steve Carter <scarter () pobox com>]

* Richard A Steenbergen said:
> On Tue, Aug 26, 2003 at 10:10:57AM -0400, Leo Bicknell wrote:
> > In a message written on Tue, Aug 26, 2003 at 09:55:30AM -0400, Jared Mauch wrote:
> > > > Yes, it is that hard.  Sadly, almost everyone I see push the IRR
> > > > works for a small ISP.  And at least half of those work for a small
> > > > ISP in Europe.
> > >
> > >   C&W, Level3, Global Crossing and NTT/Verio are small isps?
> >
> > Please correct me if I'm wrong, but they all use the IRR to filter
> > customers.  That's a fine application of the IRR, and one I encourage.
> > I don't think any of them use the IRR to filter peers.  Indeed, I
> > can provde they don't filter certian big peers due to the fact they
> > don't register thier routes at all. :)
>
> Global Crossing doesn't use the IRR to filter their BGP speaking
> customers, every prefix-list update gets touched by a human. While their
> response time is good, and they're generally friendly people, they do have
> a tendancy to prove that they are human by forgetting or typoing a random
> route with nearly every other update. When you start getting into the
> hundreds of routes, personally I will go through the trouble to maintain
> IRR entries any day vs letting humans break stuff.

As is usual with most things, it's not black and white.  It's a sticky
position that some major providers find themselves in.  A lot of customers
do not maintain their IRR objects or even have them at all.  The traction
would have to come from the provider themselves in a lot of cases, but
then customers are apt to complain when a major provider registers 'their'
routes on an IRR ... kinda like a dog peeing on a hydrant, some customers
tend to think registration means a kind of ownership claim.

-Steve