On 8 Jul 2005, at 19:26, Daniel Roesen wrote:
On Sat, Jul 09, 2005 at 12:52:35AM +0200, Andre Oppermann wrote:
Multihomed end sites usually get away with receiving only default route or some partial routes from their upstreams. So technically you can BGP multihome with Cisco 1600 or even smaller easily (dunno where BGP support is starting to become available).
Technically yes, practically no. At least not for the purposes people normally want to multihome.
I cannot confirm this observation from my experience supporting a number of customers with their multihoming setups that I've either designed myself or supported as part of "managed internet access" solutions.
Multi-homing is a tool used in the real network to protect against various failure modes. Some failure modes (e.g. last-mile link failure) can receive protection using a small router receiving multiple defaults. Other failure modes require a full table (e.g. link failure between the ISP and its upstream, or some other partial withdrawal of connectivity). The appropriate architecture depends on the needs of the site in question. One size does not fit all. Joe