Routing Architecture

A lot of requirements on The Internet can be best addressed with creative routing. With over a decade of experience with all aspects of routing, We can design an architecture that provides the maximum in performance, reliability and security for your application requirements. Described here are some of the major areas that frequently need short term attention by an expert, and which we have dealt with in the past.

Robust multi-homing design

As an ISP or a company intranet gets multiple connections for better connectivity, the complexity goes up enormously. However, most don't have a BGP expert and this can often lead to overlooking various options and efficiencies that could be exploited. Getting this wrong can mean that the additional connectivity actually lowers rather than increases reliability.

import/export rules

At all interconnects in the network, import and export rules for controlling the flow of routing data are essential. If your interconnect(s) are non-trivial, having good rules in place is required:

for your network to be seen as a good net citizen
to avoid impacting your neighbors, and the whole Internet, when routing errors occur (and getting a bad reputation)
to prevent other's errors from affecting you.

These rules take many forms: RFC2267 ingress filters, BGP route announce/accept filters, etc. We can review your existing configs and either advise on needed updates and/or do them directly as desired.

interfacing to RRDB

There are many global registries of various data. Keeping these up to date for all of your parts of the network can be a daunting task. We have experience with all of these and can set up automated procedures for sending your updates in.

Automatic config management

One of the many uses for the above databases can be as an aid in generating or cross-checking configurations for your own network equipment, especially in the routing interface with other parts of the network. If not used to generate configuration files, occasional analysis of configs against these databases can detect potential anomalous routing before you get user complaints.

Additional checks can be made to correlate both the global databases and your own configuration management with the routes that are actually being seen. This can produce useful tracking for trouble shooting later. "We used to hear network 10.0.0/22, but now we can't. Which peers used to advertise that to us and which are supposed to?"

Design of aggregation rules

With todays ever larger routing tables and the need to run on more limited equipment, the value of efficient aggregation has never been higher. Proper application of aggregation rules (to customer routes, to peer routes, even to internal routes) can also help the stability of your network.

Address space utilization plans

As address space becomes somewhat harder to acquire, good utilization is important - both as a basis for future requests, and just to be a good citizen in the network.

Distributed servers via special routing

Web servers (and other servers) can be offered in redundant distributed fashion. This can provide a much better service to your customers. There are many approaches, several involving routing setups, to do this in the face of practical restrictions of current browsers (or other client software).

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