Dave Siegel previously wrote:
As I recall the original discussion was of colocating a router, to forward packets, with a workstation, to compute routes.
So what would the normal implementation of such a design be? ebgp-multihop all of your peers into the PC, and then a single peering session the Cisco, presuming no "next-hop-self" routes?
No. Colocated BGP4 "proxies" (I'm still not sure what to call these, anyone?) would peer via EBGP with other ASes BGP4 "proxies" on the same net. The next_hop BGP4 attribute on all routes exchanged would be that of the routers on the high speed interconnect, not of the "proxies." ASes that do not implement this would still peer via EBGP router-to-router as usual and would not see the "proxies;" eventually everyone would move towards having "proxies" or else router vendors would beef up their products, either way, we're all happy.
I can see some amount of value in such a design, if it could be made to work correctly. Does anybody have the spare equipment to build a lab? (pfeh, yeah, right)
It would work (see the comment on the next_hop BGP4 attribute above). I'm sure there are folk out there that would be willing to experiment, all you need is for two ASes to try it at some exchange (and permission by the exchange to run the necessary ethernet).
Dave
-- Dave Siegel Director of Engineering, Net99 http://www.webcity.com/ (602)249-1083 24x7 NOC line http://www.rtd.com/~dsiegel/ (520)318-0696 My Tucson Office
Nick