Re: Did Internap lose all clue?

[Richard A Steenbergen <ras () e-gerbil net>]

On Thu, Oct 20, 2011 at 10:48:34PM +0200, bas wrote:
> Recently I was contacted by an Internap sales person.
> The third line of the email read:
>
> "As you know well, BGP makes all routing decisions simply based on HOP COUNT"
>
> I blinked my eyes a couple of times.. Yes it really said hop count.
> Then I replied to the guy that if he tries to sell a technical product
> to technical people he should get his info straight.

Errr, I think they mean AS hops, which is actually mostly correct. After 
you eliminate things that don't actually convey any information (like 
localpref, which you have to configure yourself), and things that don't 
provide any meaningful data in a multi-network path selection role (like 
MEDs), AS-PATH length is pretty much the only useful basis you have for 
picking a best path from your BGP peers. All other marketing crap 
asside, they aren't incorrect in pointing out that BGP really sucks as a 
way to pick a best path. :)

-- 
Richard A Steenbergen <ras () e-gerbil net>       http://www.e-gerbil.net/ras
GPG Key ID: 0xF8B12CBC (7535 7F59 8204 ED1F CC1C 53AF 4C41 5ECA F8B1 2CBC)