From time to time some have posted questions asking if BGP load balancers such as the old Routescience Pathcontrol device are still around, and if not what have others found to replace that function. I have used the Routescience device with much success 10 years ago when it first came on the market, but since then a full BGP feed has become much larger, Routescience has been bought by Avaya, then discontinued, and other competitors such as Sockeye, Netvmg have been acquired by other companies.
Doing some research on how load balancing can be accomplished in 2011, I have come across Cisco's performance routing feature, and features from load balancing companies such as F5's Link Controller. I have always found BGP to be easy to work with, and an elegant, simple solution to load balancing using a route-reflector configuration in which one BGP client (Routescience Pathcontrol in my background) learns the best route to destination networks, and then announces that best route to BGP border routers using common and widely understood BGP concepts such as communities and local pref, and found this to lead to a deterministic Internet routing architecture. This required a knowledge only of IETF standards (common BGP concepts and configurations), required no specialized scripting, or any other knowledge lying outside IETF boundaries, and it seemed reasonable to expect that network engineers should eagerly and enthusiastically want to master this technology, just as any other technology must be mastered to run high availability networks. So I am wondering if anyone has experience with implementing load balancing across multiple ISP links in 2011, and if there have been any comparisons between IETF standards-based methods using BGP, and other proprietary methods which may use a particular vendor's approach to solving the same problem, but involves some complexity with more variables to be plugged in to the architecture. David ________________________________ 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.