Rogelio wrote:
For a campus environment, I've got two WAN connections, one through
Charter (30Mbps) and one through AT&T (50 Mbps). For load balancing, I
am evaluating whether or not to use BGP or some sort of load sharing
device, like PepLink.
With BGP, I am told that my AT&T pipe may get saturated quicker, as
their metrics are better. Anyone else have problem? Or does anyone
have any suggestions for someone who is new to BGP in this sort of
situation?
BGP requires more clue on your part and more care. It also requires
that you have IP space that both providers are able and willing to
advertise. Best is space allocated to you by your RIR, and that you
obtain an AS number from your RIR. Justifying IP space can be an issue
for smaller networks. As people multi-home with BGP, the burden they
place on the rest of the Internet increases. The rest of the world will
now need to allocate memory and CPU cycles to keep track of how to reach
you, not just how to reach AT&T and Charter.
BGP has a big advantage in terms of control and simplifies the setup of
resources on your end that must be available should either provider
fail, as the same IP addresses are reachable through either provider.
Routing will be more optimal with BGP than with other load sharing
devices if it is set up and maintained properly.
With BGP, it is far easier to control how traffic leaves your network
than how it arrives, so if your goal is to avoid saturating either pipe
outbound, this isn't usually an issue if you have a relatively good
diversity of remote endpoints. Controlling traffic inbound is more of
an art, but achieving a relatively good balance according to your pipe
sizes is usually quite doable, especially if your upstreams accept
communities from you to influence your traffic leaving their networks.
(AT&T does, not sure about Charter).
Obviously, if either pipe goes down and your traffic exceeds the
bandwidth of the remaining one, you'll get congestion regardless of the
method used to load-share.
--
Jay Hennigan - CCIE #7880 - Network Engineering - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Impulse Internet Service - http://www.impulse.net/
Your local telephone and internet company - 805 884-6323 - WB6RDV
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