state of the art in router configuration
after a study on bgp misconfiguration (http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/ratul/bgp/index.html), i am beginning to wonder what the state of the art in router configuration is. a quick search on the web did not yield anything interesting. thoughts on the matter from guys who configure routers would be appreciated. 1. how do most operators configure their bgp (text editor or some high-level configuration tool)? 2. are there "configuration checkers" out there that would check whether an operator has not made a common error while modifying configuration? 3. when misconfigurations do happen, how are they detected? thanks, -- ratul
### On Sun, 20 Jan 2002 23:57:18 -0800 (PST), Ratul Mahajan ### <ratul@cs.washington.edu> casually decided to expound upon ### nanog@merit.edu the following thoughts about "state of the art in router ### configuration": RM> 1. how do most operators configure their bgp (text editor or some RM> high-level configuration tool)? Depends on what kind of router. Some routers don't even use a human-readable config file that can be editted in a text editor. In my experience, more and more big operators seem to be going thr route of config tools that they can integrate into some OSS and order provisioning system for their customer-facing edge routers. Much less emphasis in automation and tight integration however is being placed in the core. Some people use policy-based config tools (such as RAToolSet) for their peer-facing edge routers though... especially if they use the IRR in any way. Also any configuration tool should include some sort of manual editor mode IMHO. RM> 2. are there "configuration checkers" out there that would check whether RM> an operator has not made a common error while modifying configuration? Yes. I've seen it mainly for PN provisioning and activation but there are other products for more generic use. GoldWire comes to mind. RM> 3. when misconfigurations do happen, how are they detected? Once again, it depends on which device we're talking about here. It also depends on what type of misconfiguration. If the operator has employed some sort of config checking tool to manage their devices then the misconfiguration should be caught prior to actual device reconfig. If not, then it may be the Mark.I eyeball of a customer that detects the error which is never good. -- /*===================[ Jake Khuon <khuon@NEEBU.Net> ]======================+ | Packet Plumber, Network Engineers /| / [~ [~ |) | | --------------- | | for Effective Bandwidth Utilisation / |/ [_ [_ |) |_| N E T W O R K S | +=========================================================================*/
participants (2)
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Jake Khuon
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Ratul Mahajan