Perhaps we need to step back for a bit and consider the reasons for inter-provider routing, which does indeed have a purpose other than sparking flame wars on NANOG. For any connection established across the Internet, there are presumably two parties to whom that connection is important (ignoring the obvious counter-examples of spam and the like). In general, each end of the connection is paying somebody (or negotiating peering, or whatever), to let them connect to everybody else. The provider that they're paying then has to make some decisions about how they want to provide that service, whether it's to find the fastest or most direct path possible, to provide the service cheaply, to provide the service reliably, to provide the service in some way that hurts their competitors, or some combination of the above. It is in turn up to the customer whether they want to do business with a provider who operates the way their provider does. In Verio's case, they've apparrently decided that there are advantages to a small routing table, which for them outweigh the advantage of learning the potentially better paths they would get from a less stringent filtering policy. I'm sure we can all endlessly debate whether their reasons for making that decision are good enough, but since those directly affected by it are Verio customers, and I'm not a Verio customer any more, I'm not that interested in worrying about it. Other networks may make different engineering decisions, including deciding that the cost of having a bigger routing table is worth it in order to be able to use more optimal paths. They may decide that offering their customers the best possible path to a destination is something worth doing, even if the network their customer's destination connects to is behind a provider who doesn't feel the same way. As such, an ISP may understand that Verio won't listen to any /24s it advertises in non-swamp space, recognize there's not much they can do about that, but still want to see any routing informaion (including non-swamp /24s) Verio can give them that would help them send data quickly to Verio customers. I really don't see Verio being hypocritical here. Instead, I see Verio making a decision about what they want in their own routing table, but offering routes to other providers in case those other providers want to make a different decision. Those other providers are welcome to filter or accept those routes as they see fit. This seems like a simple case of Verio not forcing its policies on anybody else. -Steve On Fri, 28 Sep 2001, Patrick W. Gilmore wrote:
At 09:57 AM 9/28/2001 -0700, Majdi S. Abbas wrote:
Blaming Verio for the RIR's allocation policy simply does not make sense.
Allow me to rephrase this slightly: Blaming the RIRs for Verio's filtering policy simply does not make sense.
There is no reason for the RIRs to change. The system works, and works reasonably well today. Verio's policy, if applied to Verio by Verio's peers, would not work. (At least not from the POV of some multi-homed Verio downstreams.)
Also, if Verio would change their filters if the RIRs changed, then all the arguments about the Internet collapsing are inconsistent. (Unless "workable microallocation policy" means eliminating most of the people who currently have /24s.)
You have already stated publicly you do not understand the implications of filtering. Perhaps you should stop trying to defend that which you do not comprehend?
--msa
-- TTFN, patrick
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Steve Gibbard scg@gibbard.org