Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

> The OSI model doesn't say anything about where I run my routing algorithm and BGP application vs. where my actual switches are.

If you're $BIGASN and you set up an intra building singlemode crossconnect at $BIGCITY to establish settlement free peering (let's say for example a 4 x 10 Gbps bonded 802.3ad circuit) with $OTHERBIGASN, they most assuredly are going to notice if your BGP session and router is not directly on the other end of that cable.

Because they are going to be expecting sub-1ms latency to your router, and not "we're taking this session and stuffing it in some sort of tunnel or encapsulation and sending it somewhere else, to where the thing that actually speaks BGP is located". It's bad juju to practice deceptive peering.




> Because they are going to be expecting sub-1ms latency to your router, and not "we're taking this session and stuffing it in some sort of tunnel or encapsulation and sending it somewhere else, to where the thing that actually speaks BGP is located".

Why should they care?

> It's bad juju to practice deceptive peering.

I don't understand applying moral judgment to a technical design choice.


I'm guessing you do not handle peering for a medium to large sized AS, so it's really hard to explain. First: they should care because the point of establishing peering in a given city is to give inter-AS traffic the absolute shortest path and shortest number of hops between two points. If I put a router in portland, OR and buy a 10 Gbps mpls tunnel to Vancouver BC and join the vanix, ask to set up with peers there, all traffic will be taking a multi hundred km round trip to Portland.

Two: it's not moral judgment, it's a technical best practice to actually put routers in the city in which you set up new edge BGP sessions. Pretty basic ISP stuff in fact.


Just because they tunnel the BGP back to some software system to make routing decisions doesn't mean they tunnel all the user data to that same location. To do so would be silly.

In fact, a good system would have a couple of systems handling BGP, with physical location fairly irrelevant, but acting as if they are local to the peer they are talking to.




Consider applying for YC's Spring batch! Applications are open till Feb 11.

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: