Re: Communities

[Bradley Reynolds <brad () b63695 student cwru edu>]

On Sun, 2 Nov 1997, Kirby Files wrote:

> Can you be a little more precise?  Most providers probably use
> communities to tag subsets of the routes they carry, and some set of
> those communities, either through inclusion or exclusion, almost
> certainly describes the set of customer routes carried by that
> provider.  (I'm sure this can be stated more clearly.)  GTE certainly
> does, I'm pretty sure MCI still does, etc.

What the basic question involved was whether providers have
some sort of community in place to distribute to customers
concerning their customer/internal routes.  Also, it would be
nice if the provider would distribute this information to the
customer.  Therefore, I was wondering which providers
had such communities and which providers were willing
to distribute said communities to customers.

> Another question is, "Why do you want this info?"  Taking full transit
> routes from a provider and trying to set localpref or MED based on
> whether the destination is a customer or peer network?  If you are
> taking transit, there are good arguments for *not* running
> default-free.
It would seem to me to be helpful when coming up with
policy to route traffic bound for internal/customer
networks of an upstream to that upstream (unless that link
is down).  Sometimes the path selection does not allow
this and we are forced to use foolish kludges like
as path prepending and other neanderthalic clubbings.

Bradley Reynolds
brad () iagnet net
No Inflated Title
Internet Access Group