Re: local_preference for transit traffic?

2011-12-18 Thread Mark Tinka
On Sunday, December 18, 2011 12:32:03 AM Matthew Petach 
wrote:

 I've been able to negotiate peering+transit relationships
 with providers, but only by threat of total revenue loss;
 ie we currently pay you $x million/year; we want your
 on-net routes as settlement-free routes, and will
 continue to pay for off-net transit traffic.  Otherwise,
 we will be transferring all that revenue to your
 competitor, X

If the customer is taking these on-net routes via an 
exchange point or private peering arrangement, this should 
be fairly easy to do.

If they choose to take it over the same link as their off-
net service, not only does the provider need to support a 
visible way in which these services can be separated over 
the same wire, but it may also not make much sense for the 
customer as there is potential for on-net traffic to hog the 
link, making the case to upgrade the link for traffic that 
may not necessarily incentivise them to do so. But it's hard 
to judge this one, especially if the ISP is large with tons 
of other on-net customers talking to the customer 
negotiating such an arrangement.

I can see ISP's accepting to do this if the ratio of on-
net:off-net traffic is disproportionate, in favor of more 
off-net traffic.

 This tends to be effective only for
 content providers, though, where the outbound traffic
 dominates,
 and you don't care if the inbound bits are coming
 over the pay for pipe vs the settlement free pipe.

It's also mostly useful where the ISP is sufficiently large 
in a meaningful way for their on-net routes to make any 
sense to the downstream customer negotiating such an 
agreement.

 If you're an inbound-heavy shop, though, this won't
 really buy you much benefit.  (And, if the revenue
 point isn't in the $x millions/year for the transit
 provider, they're more likely to just shrug and say
 too much hassle...please, go be a headache
 for our competitor rather than configuring a
 dual relationship like that--so it really only works
 for higher-volume relationships.)

Maybe what you meant to say is if the revenue point isn't 
high enough :-).

Relatively, different ISP's may be kings in their part of 
town, but still be small enough to accept fewer dollars for 
such a deal.

On the whole, I can envisage cases where trying to fix this 
peering with customers issue can end up causing 
inadvertent competition with exchange points.

Mark.


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Re: local_preference for transit traffic?

2011-12-17 Thread Mark Tinka
On Friday, December 16, 2011 05:02:33 AM Joe Malcolm wrote:

 Once upon a time, UUNET did the opposite by setting
 origin to unknown for peer routes, in an attempt to
 prefer customer routes over peer routes. We moved to
 local preference shortly thereafter as it became clear
 this was changing the routes in some meaningful way;
 if a customer was multihomed to us and another provider,
 this might affect path selection.

This raises an interesting question we've dealt with many a 
time in our network - outside of situations mandated by 
governments or some such, are ISP's happy to peer with their 
customers (where peer = settlement-free exchanging of 
routes/traffic across public interconnects while customers 
= servicing a commercial IP Transit contract)?

Mark.


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Re: local_preference for transit traffic?

2011-12-17 Thread Matthew Petach
On Sat, Dec 17, 2011 at 12:14 AM, Mark Tinka mti...@globaltransit.net wrote:
 On Friday, December 16, 2011 05:02:33 AM Joe Malcolm wrote:

 Once upon a time, UUNET did the opposite by setting
 origin to unknown for peer routes, in an attempt to
 prefer customer routes over peer routes. We moved to
 local preference shortly thereafter as it became clear
 this was changing the routes in some meaningful way;
 if a customer was multihomed to us and another provider,
 this might affect path selection.

 This raises an interesting question we've dealt with many a
 time in our network - outside of situations mandated by
 governments or some such, are ISP's happy to peer with their
 customers (where peer = settlement-free exchanging of
 routes/traffic across public interconnects while customers
 = servicing a commercial IP Transit contract)?

 Mark.

I've been able to negotiate peering+transit relationships
with providers, but only by threat of total revenue loss;
ie we currently pay you $x million/year; we want your
on-net routes as settlement-free routes, and will continue
to pay for off-net transit traffic.  Otherwise, we will be
transferring all that revenue to your competitor, X
This tends to be effective only for content providers,
though, where the outbound traffic dominates,
and you don't care if the inbound bits are coming
over the pay for pipe vs the settlement free pipe.
If you're an inbound-heavy shop, though, this won't really
buy you much benefit.  (And, if the revenue
point isn't in the $x millions/year for the transit
provider, they're more likely to just shrug and say
too much hassle...please, go be a headache
for our competitor rather than configuring a
dual relationship like that--so it really only works
for higher-volume relationships.)

Matt



Re: local_preference for transit traffic?

2011-12-17 Thread Joel jaeggli
On 12/17/11 00:14 , Mark Tinka wrote:
 On Friday, December 16, 2011 05:02:33 AM Joe Malcolm wrote:
 
 Once upon a time, UUNET did the opposite by setting
 origin to unknown for peer routes, in an attempt to
 prefer customer routes over peer routes. We moved to
 local preference shortly thereafter as it became clear
 this was changing the routes in some meaningful way;
 if a customer was multihomed to us and another provider,
 this might affect path selection.
 
 This raises an interesting question we've dealt with many a 
 time in our network - outside of situations mandated by 
 governments or some such, are ISP's happy to peer with their 
 customers (where peer = settlement-free exchanging of 
 routes/traffic across public interconnects while customers 
 = servicing a commercial IP Transit contract)?

In the circumstances where I've seen this are rare... We have had
transit providers that we used who also peered with us on exchange
fabrics for v6 that's about it.

 Mark.




Re: local_preference for transit traffic?

2011-12-17 Thread Adam Rothschild
I've had similar experiences to Mr. Petach.

Depending on order of operations, you can look at this from a
different prospective as well -- why go with a soulless entity for
your transit (or transport, collocation, ...) requirements, when you
can keep it in the family and engage a peer who already understands
your service model and is committed to maintaining mutual benefit?

Indeed, the old adage of once a customer, never a peer could never be wronger.

-a



Re: local_preference for transit traffic?

2011-12-15 Thread Leo Bicknell
In a message written on Thu, Dec 15, 2011 at 02:24:13AM -0500, Keegan Holley 
wrote:
  I always assumed that taking in more traffic was a bad thing.  I've heard
 about one sided peering agreements where one side is sending more traffic
 than the other needs them to transport. Am I missing something?  Would this
 cause a shift in their favor allowing them to offload more customer traffic
 to their peers without complaint?

It's one of many techniques used by peers to balance the ratio.

However, there may be a simpler explanation.  If you bill by the
bit as a transit provider it's in your best interest to make sure
your customer gets as many bits through you as possible.  Plus if
you can fill their pipe, they need to buy an upgrade to you.

-- 
   Leo Bicknell - bickn...@ufp.org - CCIE 3440
PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/


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Re: local_preference for transit traffic?

2011-12-15 Thread Mark Tinka
On Thursday, December 15, 2011 10:42:37 PM Leo Bicknell 
wrote:

 However, there may be a simpler explanation.  If you bill
 by the bit as a transit provider it's in your best
 interest to make sure your customer gets as many bits
 through you as possible.  Plus if you can fill their
 pipe, they need to buy an upgrade to you.

Indeed.

Mark.


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Re: local_preference for transit traffic?

2011-12-15 Thread Keegan Holley
2011/12/15 Mark Tinka mti...@globaltransit.net

 On Thursday, December 15, 2011 10:42:37 PM Leo Bicknell
 wrote:

  However, there may be a simpler explanation.  If you bill
  by the bit as a transit provider it's in your best
  interest to make sure your customer gets as many bits
  through you as possible.  Plus if you can fill their
  pipe, they need to buy an upgrade to you.

 Indeed.

 Forgive my ignorance, but are connections between ISP's normally billed by
the bit?  I'm a transit AS but not an ISP in the traditional sense, so I
just have the normal monthly billing.


Re: local_preference for transit traffic?

2011-12-15 Thread Mark Tinka
On Friday, December 16, 2011 12:27:48 AM Keegan Holley 
wrote:

 Forgive my ignorance, but are connections between ISP's
 normally billed by the bit?  I'm a transit AS but not an
 ISP in the traditional sense, so I just have the normal
 monthly billing. 

Per-bit billing, for us, is not a pre-requisite for us to 
encourage traffic toward our customers to use the transit 
link they purchase from us.

Mark.


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Re: local_preference for transit traffic?

2011-12-15 Thread Joe Malcolm
Jeff Wheeler writes:
On Thu, Dec 15, 2011 at 1:07 AM, Keegan Holley
keegan.hol...@sungard.com wrote:
 Had in interesting conversation with a transit AS on behalf of a customer
 where I found out they are using communities to raise the local preference

That sounds like a disreputable practice.

While not quite as obvious, some large transit ASes, like Level3,
reset the origin to I (best) sometime between when they learn it and
when they announce it to their customers and peers.  This similarly
causes them to suck in a bit more traffic than they might otherwise.

Once upon a time, UUNET did the opposite by setting origin to unknown
for peer routes, in an attempt to prefer customer routes over peer
routes. We moved to local preference shortly thereafter as it became
clear this was changing the routes in some meaningful way; if a
customer was multihomed to us and another provider, this might affect
path selection.

(The original thought was that local pref might be too heavyweight,
but of course later it became the standard.)

Joe



local_preference for transit traffic?

2011-12-14 Thread Keegan Holley
Had in interesting conversation with a transit AS on behalf of a customer
where I found out they are using communities to raise the local preference
of routes that do not originate locally by default before sending to a
other larger transit AS's.  Obviously this isn't something that was asked
of them and it took a few days to find since the customer is not a large
company and neither them nor my company has a link or business relationship
with the AS in question.  This seemed strange to me for obvious reasons,
but I was curious if anyone else was doing this and why.  You obviously
cannot use prepend to affect transit traffic again for obvious reasons.
MED is a weak metric but it at least only affects traffic that was already
going to transit your AS.  The larger transit AS was favoring a lower
bandwidth link for the customer and causing them to drop packets
mysteriously.  Just wondering if this practice seemed as strange to others
as it does to me.


RE: local_preference for transit traffic?

2011-12-14 Thread Holmes,David A
For this very reason I have advocated using longest prefix BGP routing for some 
years now, and checking periodically for the expected path, as it became 
obvious from investigating traceroutes that traffic was not being routed as 
intended using AS prepends.

-Original Message-
From: Keegan Holley [mailto:keegan.hol...@sungard.com]
Sent: Wednesday, December 14, 2011 10:08 PM
To: NANOG
Subject: local_preference for transit traffic?

Had in interesting conversation with a transit AS on behalf of a customer
where I found out they are using communities to raise the local preference
of routes that do not originate locally by default before sending to a
other larger transit AS's.  Obviously this isn't something that was asked
of them and it took a few days to find since the customer is not a large
company and neither them nor my company has a link or business relationship
with the AS in question.  This seemed strange to me for obvious reasons,
but I was curious if anyone else was doing this and why.  You obviously
cannot use prepend to affect transit traffic again for obvious reasons.
MED is a weak metric but it at least only affects traffic that was already
going to transit your AS.  The larger transit AS was favoring a lower
bandwidth link for the customer and causing them to drop packets
mysteriously.  Just wondering if this practice seemed as strange to others
as it does to me.

This communication, together with any attachments or embedded links, is for the 
sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain information that is 
confidential or legally protected. If you are not the intended recipient, you 
are hereby notified that any review, disclosure, copying, dissemination, 
distribution or use of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have 
received this communication in error, please notify the sender immediately by 
return e-mail message and delete the original and all copies of the 
communication, along with any attachments or embedded links, from your system.



Re: local_preference for transit traffic?

2011-12-14 Thread Keegan Holley
I suppose so because prepend is so easily defeated, but sometimes you don't
own a prefix shorter than the one you need to advertise.  Assuming I
understand your suggestion correctly.

2011/12/15 Holmes,David A dhol...@mwdh2o.com

 For this very reason I have advocated using longest prefix BGP routing for
 some years now, and checking periodically for the expected path, as it
 became obvious from investigating traceroutes that traffic was not being
 routed as intended using AS prepends.

 -Original Message-
 From: Keegan Holley [mailto:keegan.hol...@sungard.com]
 Sent: Wednesday, December 14, 2011 10:08 PM
 To: NANOG
 Subject: local_preference for transit traffic?

 Had in interesting conversation with a transit AS on behalf of a customer
 where I found out they are using communities to raise the local preference
 of routes that do not originate locally by default before sending to a
 other larger transit AS's.  Obviously this isn't something that was asked
 of them and it took a few days to find since the customer is not a large
 company and neither them nor my company has a link or business relationship
 with the AS in question.  This seemed strange to me for obvious reasons,
 but I was curious if anyone else was doing this and why.  You obviously
 cannot use prepend to affect transit traffic again for obvious reasons.
 MED is a weak metric but it at least only affects traffic that was already
 going to transit your AS.  The larger transit AS was favoring a lower
 bandwidth link for the customer and causing them to drop packets
 mysteriously.  Just wondering if this practice seemed as strange to others
 as it does to me.

 This communication, together with any attachments or embedded links, is
 for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain information
 that is confidential or legally protected. If you are not the intended
 recipient, you are hereby notified that any review, disclosure, copying,
 dissemination, distribution or use of this communication is strictly
 prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify
 the sender immediately by return e-mail message and delete the original and
 all copies of the communication, along with any attachments or embedded
 links, from your system.




Re: local_preference for transit traffic?

2011-12-14 Thread Jeff Wheeler
On Thu, Dec 15, 2011 at 1:07 AM, Keegan Holley
keegan.hol...@sungard.com wrote:
 Had in interesting conversation with a transit AS on behalf of a customer
 where I found out they are using communities to raise the local preference

That sounds like a disreputable practice.

While not quite as obvious, some large transit ASes, like Level3,
reset the origin to I (best) sometime between when they learn it and
when they announce it to their customers and peers.  This similarly
causes them to suck in a bit more traffic than they might otherwise.

-- 
Jeff S Wheeler j...@inconcepts.biz
Sr Network Operator  /  Innovative Network Concepts



Re: local_preference for transit traffic?

2011-12-14 Thread Keegan Holley
 I always assumed that taking in more traffic was a bad thing.  I've heard
about one sided peering agreements where one side is sending more traffic
than the other needs them to transport. Am I missing something?  Would this
cause a shift in their favor allowing them to offload more customer traffic
to their peers without complaint?

2011/12/15 Jeff Wheeler j...@inconcepts.biz

 On Thu, Dec 15, 2011 at 1:07 AM, Keegan Holley
 keegan.hol...@sungard.com wrote:
  Had in interesting conversation with a transit AS on behalf of a customer
  where I found out they are using communities to raise the local
 preference

 That sounds like a disreputable practice.

 While not quite as obvious, some large transit ASes, like Level3,
 reset the origin to I (best) sometime between when they learn it and
 when they announce it to their customers and peers.  This similarly
 causes them to suck in a bit more traffic than they might otherwise.

 --
 Jeff S Wheeler j...@inconcepts.biz
 Sr Network Operator  /  Innovative Network Concepts





Re: local_preference for transit traffic?

2011-12-14 Thread Jeff Wheeler
On Thu, Dec 15, 2011 at 2:24 AM, Keegan Holley
keegan.hol...@sungard.com wrote:
 I always assumed that taking in more traffic was a bad thing.  I've heard
 about one sided peering agreements where one side is sending more traffic
 than the other needs them to transport. Am I missing something?  Would this
 cause a shift in their favor allowing them to offload more customer traffic
 to their peers without complaint?

Well, if Level3 wanted less ingress traffic, they would probably stop
this practice.  I would imagine they thought about it carefully.

-- 
Jeff S Wheeler j...@inconcepts.biz
Sr Network Operator  /  Innovative Network Concepts