Subject: Re: Open Routing Area meeting in Vienna

From: Tulip Rasputin <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Jul 2003 02:51:18 -0400 (EDT)

Robert,
 
> There has always been an issue if one should extend one city with new
> buildings or start over and build new city. My take on this is that if
> the architecture of a given city is good, communication is perfect and
> can scale adding a new buildings or districts nicely divided from one
> another will not harm anyone to get to large sizes accomodating all
> newcommers.

I *dont* like this analogy at all but since you've started this, let me make an attempt to explain
you using the same. Say you have this really great city and the taxes are really low here. The
infrastructure is great, the climate is fantastic and you have lovely beaches. Everybody is happy,
the administration is satisfied with the population and the related issues.

Because of the above mentioned factors, people from nearby (and far off) states/cities start
immigrating to this city. They believe that the infrastructure is great (and all the other things
which i mentioned) and that it would really take them no time to commute to their work (which
happens to be in other cities!). 

Over a period of time, you have equal number of people living in this city who work here and who
work in places nowhere connected/associated with this city. They by all means share the same
resources as the people living/working in this city. Dont you now see a problem with this (traffic
jams/increased property rates/rents/pollution/etc)?

The local authorities would somehow need to put a check on this. They can as a deterrent increase
the taxes or do something to prevent more people from coming in. The infrastructure is now enough
to just keep this much population. Now what if more people want to come in who need to work here?
What about the offsprings? 

As i had said earlier, i dont approve of this analogy at all and infact find it quite dumb - but
used the same to explain my point and what probably has been plaguing the ADs and the other
IETFers for long!

BGP is critical for the Internet (Pedro might feel uncomfortable for my using this term so loosely
:) !) and we must proceed with caution. By adding more and more features we will only be bloating
the code size and the probability of introducing more and more bugs. Yes, this is an
implementation specific issue and the vendors will have their own ways to deal with it - but the
fact remains that by doing this we make BGP more and more vulnerable than what it already is.

Regards,
Rasputin

P.S.

And why is it that we only see some of the vendors in favor of bundling BGP with everything. Is
there any ISP out there which feels the same? What is it that they feel is right? Would they want
to muck around with BGP?

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From: Robert Raszuk <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Jul 2003 09:27:33 +0200

Tulip,

> there any ISP out there which feels the same? What is it that they feel is right? Would they want

Each operator I have talked to clearly indicated huge resistance to
undertake operational pain of rolling new intra/inter domain
"non-routing" information distribution protocol.

Kurt,

> >> Given that the underlying desire seems to be that SPs that are not
> >> interest in a given service would prefer not to have that
> >> functionality added to BGP (in fact many people mentioned that they
> >> wanted not to have the functionality in the router software, period)
> 
> A number of people said they at least did want this code enabled if 
> they where not using the service.

This stament is comming back a lot. What does it mean "code enabled" ?

Maybe someone would provide an example how let's say adding multicast
distribution to BGP impacts IPv4 unicast address family ? If one does
not need to use it - just don't configure it. Almost all protocol
extensions are knobed - thay are NOT enabled by default carrying vacum.
Most vendors I am aware about either already or soon have the option of
per AFI/SAFI specific BGP sub-process clearly separating running or not
new functionality. 

If I have BGP free core, and I don't type by accident "router bgp ..." I
don't really see a good reason to buy routers which do not support BGP
just so I don't have it in the core. If I have IPv4 ASBRs and i am not
keen on running on them 2547 just don't configure vpnv4 AF there. I am
yet to see a one single case where new opaque to existing functionality
code presence if not configured or enabled by user caused any trouble to
anyone.

Thx,
R.

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From: Robert Raszuk <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Jul 2003 09:27:33 +0200

Tulip,

Kurt,

Thx,
R.

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From: Tulip Rasputin <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Jul 2003 03:41:54 -0400 (EDT)

Robert,
 
> "non-routing" information distribution protocol.

If this is the only *motivation* then i am sure we need to think more before proceeding further.
It is really an operational pain to configure geographically separated routers. Why not, have BGP
automatically send configurations to all such routers by some sort of "automatic flooding"!

> per AFI/SAFI specific BGP sub-process clearly separating running or not

I am sure you must have looked into the BGP implementation for the vendor you work for. Dont you
parse for the multicast routes in the same file as you do for the IPv4 unicast address family. Are
you sure you didnt tough the functions which parse the IPv4 routes when you introduced multicast
support? What i mean to say is that even if you do turn off one particular feature you do put in
all the additional code in your main working code - which in turn definitely complicates the stuff
and makes it more prone to bugs/mishaps/surprises (depending upon which side of the fence you are
on!)

By turning off an option you dont remove the code dynamically from the binary image .. Its still
there tightly coupled with remaining code! Dynamically removing the code has atleast not been done
till the time of my writing this email!! :-)

Rasputin

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From: Kurt Erik Lindqvist <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Jul 2003 09:53:22 +0200

> "non-routing" information distribution protocol.

There certainly was a large number of very large providers at the 
meeting that express differing opinions.

> This stament is comming back a lot. What does it mean "code enabled" ?

A problem with data for one "feature" distributed will effect the 
session/processing of data for another feature.

> not need to use it - just don't configure it.

I don't like to take examples from a single vendor, as over time they 
tend to be equally bad, but I have had enough experience of multicast 
problems effecting BGP routes on my Ciscos. If you go and dig in the 
bug tracker there should be some 12-18 months back. Unfortunately I no 
longer have access to CCO.

- - kurtis -

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From: Tulip Rasputin <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Jul 2003 03:41:54 -0400 (EDT)

Robert,

Rasputin

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From: Kurt Erik Lindqvist <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Jul 2003 09:53:22 +0200

- - kurtis -