Funny, I was just at your IPv6 sight this morning while researching multihoming scenarios. "That name sounds familiar....." -Hammer- "I was a normal American nerd." -Jack Herer On Tue, Feb 22, 2011 at 12:52 PM, Hammer <bhmccie@gmail.com> wrote:
I agree. But swapping providers is not the default answer in some environments. I work in an enterprise with multiple GE circuits from multiple providers to the Internet. The lead time on calling up a different carrier and saying "I need a gigabit connection to the Internet" would probably be 90-120 days. And then you get to go thru the contracts/negotiations and MSAs. You don't just flip. In smaller operations I understand. But I was simply saying that it's not always that easy. If I went to my boss and said one of our carriers sucks and we should dump them he would just laugh and throw me out.
1. What are the SLAs with the carrier in question? Do you have them clearly defined? Are they out of SLA? If so, what compensation is entitled based on violation of said SLA?
2. What trending are you doing to document the failures in SLA of the carrier in question? Do we have a documented pattern of poor performence by using that trending?
3. What are our contractual or legal options based on items 1 and 2?
4. Don't forget about the Layer8 (political) factor. If your telco manager is buddies with the carrier then you have to double your documentation against them. Some companies spend tens of millions a month on circuits. You better be ready to justify yourself.
-Hammer-
"I was a normal American nerd." -Jack Herer
On Tue, Feb 22, 2011 at 12:38 PM, Owen DeLong <owen@delong.com> wrote:
Assuming that he has provider independent space (why run full BGP feeds if you are not multihomed?), then, actually it's about on par and less disruptive in general. Add new provider, wait a day or two, then disconnect old provider.
If he's using provider assigned space, then, the big hurdle is switching to provider independent (requires a renumber), but, that's a good idea for a variety of reasons.
I would hardly call the type and frequency of outages described a "whim" when using that as a reason to change providers. Sounds like he is suffering severe impact to his business.
Owen
On Feb 22, 2011, at 10:15 AM, Hammer wrote:
I'm not argueing that at all. But it wasn't relevent to the question at hand. And depending on the scale of your business dumping providers is not something done on a whim. It's not like your fed up with DSL and want to convert to Cable.
-Hammer-
"I was a normal American nerd." -Jack Herer
On Tue, Feb 22, 2011 at 12:11 PM, Bret Clark <bclark@spectraaccess.com wrote:
On 02/22/2011 12:23 PM, Hammer wrote:
As Max stated, you can set triggers based on thresholds that are monitered via multiple methods in Cisco IOS. That way you could force the route down dynamically. There's always a risk when letting the machines do the thinking but this would help in situations like this. Can't speak for other vendors but I'm sure the features are similar.
Well as someone else stated, if an upstream provider can't provide BGP reliably then it's time to give them the boot. Once in a year, okay, but beyond that, then it's time to read riot act with that provider. Bret