On Tue, Jan 23, 2024 at 03:37:25PM -0800, William Herrin wrote:
Nevertheless, in the protocol's design, the one expressed in the RFC's, AS path length = distance.
Bill, The protocol was also developed at a time when everyone utilized the same transit provider, and all other ASes were regional or local in scope. Still, I'm not sure your assertion is true. There are senior network engineers on this list who weren't even alive when 1105 was published, and express contemplation of AS path as a tiebreaker doesn't come into it until 1164: "1. An AS can minimize the number of transit ASs. (Shorter AS paths can be preferred over longer ones.)" Note the can...hardly a MUST, or a SHOULD. AS hop count was never intended as a large hammer, and it has never been one in practice, since most people are making their decisions based on local preference, which for the last couple of decades is typically set based on internal community tagging. --msa