Re: Is it normal for your provider to withhold BGP peering info until the night of the cut?

[Daniel Corbe <dcorbe () hammerfiber com>]

> We have 4 full-peering providers between two data centers. Our accounting people did some shopping and found that 
> there was a competitor who came in substantially lower this year and leadership decided to swap our most expensive 
> circuit to the new carrier. 
> (I don't know what etiquette is, so I won't name the carrier... but it's a well-known name) Anyways, we were 
> preparing for the circuit cutover and asked for the BGP peering info up front like we normally do. This carrier said 
> that they don't provide this until the night of the cut. Now, we've done this 5 or 6 times over the years with all of 
> our other carriers and this is the first one to ever do this. We even escalated to our account manager and they still 
> won't provide it.
> I know it's not a huge deal, but life is so much easier when you can prestage your cut and rollback commands. In 
> fact, our internal Change Management process mandates peer review all proposed config changes and now we have to 
> explain why some lines say TBD!
> Is this a common SOP nowadays? Anyone care to explain why they wouldn't just provide it ahead of time?
> Thanks in advance.
> CWB                                     

My question to the OP would be why didn’t you schedule the turndown of the old circuit to overlap with the turnup of 
the new circuit?  That way you could perform your cut independently of turn-up testing with your new provider.  Why is 
it that you MUST perform both activities on the same night?  You can always turn up a circuit, make sure it works and 
then turn it back down on your end until you’re actually ready to use it.