On Thu, 30 Aug 2001, Patrick Greenwell wrote:
Sean, I think there is a disconnect in definitions. Randy's orignal rant defined anyone that didn't have >= /20 worth of space and 2xDS3's as a potential "basement dual-homer."
Hm, we have a /19 (although we only use a /21 at present, but E1 + ~ T1. If that means someone will be calling us basement dual homers, fine. As long as that doesn't mean we only get second rate connectivity, that is. I'm afraid the large networks are looking for an excuse to push the small ones out of business, by badmouthing "basement dual-homers" while in fact they themselves are the ones that bloat the global routing table.
By that definition there are a large number of "basement dual-homers" out there.
I don't think there are many "real" basement dual-homers. Getting a second line, an AS number and a decent router are too expensive if you don't make a reasonable amount of money on selling network services.
Well, as a "basement dual-homer"(by Randy's definition), I want disparate paths, as well as insulation from poor service and/or the complete failure(as a business) of a given organization. Having suffered at the hands of various bandwidth and large colo providers over the years("yes your service was down for 3 hours, where would you like your check for $27.12 sent?") I would never in good conscience recommend that an organization which wishes to provide 24/7 availability single-home, and based on my experience I reject the notion that there are magic providers out there that never go down.
My feeling is that the only way for a small network to compete with the large ones is by multihoming. If a small network connects to a larger network, it can only resell the larger network's services at a higher price and lower availability. So if the small network wants to compete on anything other than service, it has to connect to two large networks so its uptime is better than that of any of the those networks individually.