Re: redistribute bgp considered harmful

["Kevin Oberman" <oberman () es net>]

> Date: Fri, 4 Oct 2002 18:01:15 -0400 (EDT)
> From: Sean Donelan <sean () donelan com>
> Sender: owner-nanog () merit edu
>
>
>
> Should the Service Provider version of routing software include the
> redistribute bgp command?  Other than CCIE labs, I haven't seen a
> real-world use for redistributing the BGP route table into any IGP.
>
> If the command was removed (or included a Are your sure? question) what
> would the affect be on ISPs, other than improving reliability by
> stopping network engineers from fubaring a backbone?

Is it possible that anyone running an ISP or NSP would be dumb enough
to ever do this? (rhetorical question, I know the real answer.)

While I would not like to see it removed (some where, some time,
someone will have a reason to want this), I suppose an "Are you sure?"
would not hurt, there are a great many commands that can prove
similarly disastrous. I'm not sure why this one needs it for than
others.

On the whole, I really don't care for this sort of hand-holding for
people who claim to be engineers. It's annoying and I doubt it buys
much. The "engineer" who did this in error probably THINKS he wants to
do it and would simply reply "yes".

R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer
Energy Sciences Network (ESnet)
Ernest O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab)
E-mail: oberman () es net                       Phone: +1 510 486-8634