On Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 05:41:03PM -0400, Joe Provo wrote:
Most ISPs don't have that level of management clue & willpower, as the same "but they will go to $competator who doesn't require it!" which has screwed up everything from domain registration to responsible BGP announcements fouls the customer interface as well. Account reps wanting an exception 'just this once' are the norm.
I would make the opposite argument, my business would NEVER go to any network which didn't support IRR (and a bunch of other simple but important things, like a full set of non-secret BGP communities). It's amazing the number of networks that excludes in this day and age. And not even because "omg IRR is good because someone told me so and we should support it", but because I've seen FAR too much grief caused by humans typoing prefix-lists, or taking days to process them. It is the height of absurdity that this would ever be considered an acceptable solution to the problem. But most of all I'm amazed that we as network operators have managed to take such a simple concept as a protocol for storing and recursively retrieving a list of prefixes in a database and turned it into such a sloppy mess. We really shot ourselves in the foot with the complexity of RPSL, which tries to be everything to everyone rather than actually provide a simple effective way to maintain prefix-lists. -- Richard A Steenbergen <ras@e-gerbil.net> http://www.e-gerbil.net/ras GPG Key ID: 0xF8B12CBC (7535 7F59 8204 ED1F CC1C 53AF 4C41 5ECA F8B1 2CBC)