Patrick, Your usage is quite consistent with the RFC 1930 guidelines on the use of AS, which probably does need some updating but does have an operational rather than a protocol theory viewpoint. Specifically, an AS is defined not as a business entity, not as a routing domain, but as: "...a connected group of one or more IP prefixes run by one or more network operators which has a SINGLE and CLEARLY DEFINED routing policy." In this case, the sites have a common, coordinated routing policy. I do agree that practicality does call for them to have a direct connection, but otherwise, they meet the requirement of being one or more IP prefixes run by one or more operators. I do hope they register their routing policy, with appropriate comments. Howard -----Original Message----- From: Patrick W. Gilmore [mailto:patrick@ianai.net] Sent: Saturday, May 24, 2008 11:11 AM To: NANOG list Subject: Re: Same AS number from different location and Migration of IPaddresses On May 24, 2008, at 9:15 AM, Marshall Eubanks wrote:
On May 23, 2008, at 8:15 PM, devang patel wrote:
Is that okay to use Same AS number for the two different site on different location?
To answer this specific question, Autonomous Systems should be topologically convex. This means, at the Internet interdomain routing (BGP) level, that packets cannot leave an AS in one place to get to locations in the same AS in some other place.
So, to put two sites on one AS, there should be an internal connection between them, which can be done through your internal network, by a direct connection, or by a tunnel. Traffic might come to the AS at either site, and has to be routed internally to get to the other.
I am afraid I have to disagree with Marshall. The idea behind an AS when the routing protocols were written long ago may have been a contiguous domain, but there are lots of things the protocols did not originally envision. If you have two islands, and they each have a prefix which is globally routable, there is nothing wrong with the two islands sharing a single ASN. Island A announces Prefix A, and Island B announces Prefix B. Routing is done by prefix, not ASN, so there is no fear of Island A getting packets for Island B, and therefore no requirement for internal connectivity. And before anyone says anything about Island A not having connectivity to Island B, these are obviously not "transit free" networks, so each island can just point default. In fact, cisco even has a knob to listen to paths with your own ASN in it so you can do this without default (although I'm not sure I'd recommend that). It works fine and saves the community from burning an ASN. -- TTFN, patrick