Re: Enterprise Multihoming

["John Neiberger" <john.neiberger () efirstbank com>]

> > > "Stephen J. Wilcox" <steve () telecomplete co uk> 3/12/04 9:06:38 AM
> I dont agree that connecting to two+ upstreams makes you better. In
my
> experience end networks have a couple of orders of magnitude more
downtime than
> a PoP in any reasonably large ISP. Ie the percentage theoretical
improvement is 
> small.
>
> In addition you seriously increase the complexity of your system,
chances are
> you're using the cheapest kit you could find (or at least cheaper and
smaller
> than what I would use).. its not great at BGP and may fall over when
you get a 
> minor DoS attack, you probably generate flaps quite a bit from adhoc
changes and 
> if you're announcing a /24 then thats going to get you dampened
quickly.. so you 
> actually create a new weakest link. Also most of the corporates I've
dealt with 
> take defaults rather than full tables.. so if the provider does have
an issue 
> you still forward the traffic, theres no failover of outbound
routing.
> Even if you spend (waste) the money on some decent gear, you're on
your own and 
> when a problem occurs the ISPs are going to be less helpful to you
(not by 
> choice, I mean they dont have control of your network any more.. there
knowledge 
> of whats causing problems is limited to the bit that they provide to
you), so 
> chances are your problems may be more serious and take longer to
diagnose and 
> fix.

The above arguments are rather similar to the ones I heard on the other
discussion list I mentioned, and they were somewhat compelling.

> IMHO avoid multihoming. You will know when you are big enough and you
*need* to 
> do it, if you're not sure or you only want to do it cause you heard
everyone 
> else is and its real cool then I suggest you dont.

In our case, we already are multihoming and I'm considering moving away
from that to a simpler solution. It's been my assertion that we didn't
need to multihome in the beginning. The decision was made at a level
higher than me. However, now that we have it I'm trying to determine the
pros and cons related to moving to a single provider.

Thanks,
John
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