On 2009-01-12, at 16:16, Patrick W. Gilmore wrote:
People have been doing it forever. However, it has been considered sketchy at best.
This all seems highly subjective. Considered that way by some, sure (including you, it seems). In my experience prepending someone else's AS to a prefix has only been useful operationally only as a short-term, emergency measure (e.g. when trying to avoid a black-hole between two remote ASes, neither of whom shows any signs of fixing the problem). Randy's application, and Lorenzo's before him also seem like short- term applications designed to explore answering operational questions. Just because something is generally not used, or even if it's only worth using in an emergency, doesn't make it "sketchy". Most knee-jerk reactions to AS_PATH manipulation sound to me like fear of the unusual. Joe