On Thu, Jul 03, 2008 at 10:36:27PM -0400, Christian Koch wrote:
i definitely see value in appliances like the fcp and route science box, i just think for a smaller provider it may not be necessary - or maybe i have it backwards,and it is a better solution for a smaller provider so they don't have to waste money on highly skilled engineers? maybe i am just thinking "inside" the box at the moment, from an engineers view..if so my apologies for steering off course
The FCP stinks at managing blackholing. There's supposedly new code on the way to help with some of the blackhole avoidance, but I'll believe it when I see it. It can only really control the outbound path, so if someone else chooses a path to me that blackholed between us, there's not a lot it can do. On the other hand, the best value of the FCP is commit management. It does a fantastic job of making sure we pay the least amount of money to our tranit providers. No more manual balancing of traffic frees up a lot of time, and having an automatic process for it means that we never exceed commit on links that we don't have to. The FCP produces lovely graphs and charts that describe this, which is probably why people accuse it of being too PHB-friendly. But Internap wasn't stupid - one of those pretty charts is cost savings the FCP has accumulated this month vs. the natural BGP decision. For a network with a heavy outbound bias, that quickly adds up to a decent chunk of change. Ross -- Ross Vandegrift ross@kallisti.us "The good Christian should beware of mathematicians, and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of Hell." --St. Augustine, De Genesi ad Litteram, Book II, xviii, 37