Re: IRON vs. BGP (was Re: BGPttH. Neustar can do it, why can't we?)

[Owen DeLong <owen () delong com>]

On Aug 7, 2012, at 10:50 , Wes Felter <wmf () felter org> wrote:

> On 8/6/12 8:04 PM, Owen DeLong wrote:
>
> > The goal here was to make this as simple and cost-effective as the NAT-based
> > IPv4 solution currently in common use. There's no reason it can't be exactly that.
> >
> > It does provide advantages over the NAT-based solution (sessions can survive
> > failover).
>
> What do people think about Fred Templin's IRON multihomed tunneling approach (or LISP, I guess it can do it)? IRON 
> should give you multihoming with stable IPv4 and IPv6 PA prefixes, even for incoming traffic. It's less reliable than 
> BGP in theory since you'd be virtually single-homed to your IRON provider but that might be a worthwhile tradeoff 
> since staying up is pretty much their purpose in life.
>
> You'd have to pay a third provider to terminate your tunnels, but that might be cheaper than paying an extra BGP tax 
> to both of your physical providers. IRON appears to require much less configuration than BGP and it can also provide 
> IPv6 over v4-only providers (good luck finding *two* broadband providers in the same location that provide IPv6 and 
> BGP).
>
> -- 
> Wes Felter
> IBM Research - Austin

I think IRON has some promise as well and might be interesting in some scenarios.

I think developing both is worth while. Different tools for different jobs.

Owen