At 02:44 PM 4/8/96, David ``Joel Katz'' Schwartz wrote:

On Mon, 8 Apr 1996, Avi Freedman wrote:

...

Now, many 2nd level providers that *could* operate default-free choose not to. Even if you have three or more sets of 30k+ routes each, it takes balls to risk dropping packets that your customers want you to deliver just so that you can have the packet be dropped at your router instead of at your (possibly backup) transit provider's router.

Avi

Can't anyone who takes full routes from any tier 1 provider operate without a default route? And isn't it a reasonable assumption that if you don't have a route somewhere, odds are they don't have a route to you (assuming you do your own BGP routing) and so a default route is mostly pointless anyway?

What am I missing?

DS

you are missing the definitions of Peering vs. Transit. craig