{"id":1832,"date":"2017-09-29T22:51:29","date_gmt":"2017-09-29T22:51:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mtin.net\/blog\/?p=1832"},"modified":"2017-09-29T22:51:29","modified_gmt":"2017-09-29T22:51:29","slug":"the-problem-with-peering-from-a-logistics-standpoint","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mtin.net\/blog\/the-problem-with-peering-from-a-logistics-standpoint\/","title":{"rendered":"The problem with peering from a logistics standpoint"},"content":{"rendered":"

Many ISPs run into this problem as part of their growing pains.\u00a0 This scenario usually starts happening with their third or 4th peer.<\/p>\n

Scenario.\u00a0 ISP grows beyond the single connection they have.\u00a0 This can be 10 meg, 100 meg, gig or whatever.\u00a0 They start out looking for redundancy. The ISP brings in a second provider, usually at around the same bandwidth level.\u00a0 This way the network has two pretty equal paths to go out.<\/p>\n

A unique problem usually develops as the network grows to the point of peaking the capacity of both of these connections.\u00a0 The ISP has to make a decision. Do they increase the capacity to just one provider? Most don’t have the budget to increase capacities to both providers. Now, if you increase one you are favouring one provider over another until the budget allows you to increase capacity on both. You are essentially in a state where you have to favor one provider in order to keep up capacity.\u00a0 If you fail over to the smaller pipe things could be just as bad as being down.<\/p>\n

This is where many ISPs learn the hard way that BGP is not load balancing. But what about padding, communities, local-pref, and all that jazz? We will get to that.\u00a0 In the meantime, our ISP may have the opportunity to get to an Internet Exchange (IX) and offload things like streaming traffic.\u00a0 Traffic returns to a little more balance because you essentially have a 3rd provider with the IX connection. But, they growing pains don’t stop there.<\/p>\n

As ISP’s, especially\u00a0WISPs, have more and more resources to deal with cutting down latency they start seeking out better-peered networks.\u00a0 The next growing pain that becomes apparent is the networks with lots of high-end peers tend to charge more money.\u00a0 In order for the ISP to buy bandwidth they usually have to do it in smaller quantities from these types of providers. This introduces the probably of a mismatched pipe size again with a twist. The twist is the more, and better peers a network has the more traffic is going to want to\u00a0travel to that peer. So, the more expensive peer, which you are probably buying less of, now wants to handle more of your traffic.<\/p>\n

So, the network geeks will bring up things like padding, communities, local-pref, and all the tricks BGP has.\u00a0 But, at the end of the day, BGP is not load balancing.\u00a0 You can *influence* traffic, but BGP does not allow you to say “I want 100 megs of traffic here, and 500 megs here.”\u00a0 Keep in mind BGP deals with traffic to and from IP blocks, not the traffic itself.<\/p>\n

So, how does the ISP solve this? Knowing about your upstream peers is the first thing.\u00a0 BGP looking glasses, peer reports such as those from Hurricane Electric<\/a>, and general news help keep you on top of things.\u00a0 Things such as new peering points, acquisitions, and new data centers\u00a0can influence an ISPs traffic.\u00a0 If your equipment supports things such as netflow, sflow, and other tools you can begin to build a picture of your traffic and what ASNs it is going to. This is your first major step. Get tools to know what ASNs the traffic is going to\u00a0 \u00a0You can then take this data, and look at how your own peers are connected with these ASNs.\u00a0 You will start to see things like provider A is poorly peered with ASN 2906.<\/p>\n

Once you know who your peers are and have a good feel on their peering then you can influence your traffic.\u00a0 If you know you don’t want to send traffic destined for ASN 2906 in or out provider A you can then start to implement AS padding and all the tricks we mentioned before.\u00a0 But, you need the greater picture before you can do that.<\/p>\n

One last note. Peering is dynamic.\u00a0 You have to keep on top of the ecosystem as a whole.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many ISPs run into this problem as part of their growing pains.\u00a0 This scenario usually starts happening with their third or 4th peer. Scenario.\u00a0 ISP grows beyond the single connection they have.\u00a0 This can be 10 meg, 100 meg, gig or whatever.\u00a0 They start out looking for redundancy. The ISP brings in a second provider, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1833,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[212,67,17,156],"tags":[13,6,473,474,475,43,472,5],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.mtin.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/dreamstime_xs_87568893.jpg?fit=480%2C320&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6VLMf-ty","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":233,"url":"https:\/\/www.mtin.net\/blog\/mtin-wispa-announcement\/","url_meta":{"origin":1832,"position":0},"title":"MTIN WISPA Announcement","author":"j2sw","date":"January 26, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"MTIN would like to announce some exciting new services for ISPs and network operators The first is Midwest Internet Exchange ( www.midwest-ix.com ) MidWest-IX has created a peering fabric we are expanding to data centers focused on the needs of WISPs and network operators such as yourself. Peering can be\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News"","block_context":{"text":"News","link":"https:\/\/www.mtin.net\/blog\/category\/news-2\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":371,"url":"https:\/\/www.mtin.net\/blog\/transit-peer-downstream-what-do-they-all-mean\/","url_meta":{"origin":1832,"position":1},"title":"Transit, peer, downstream..what do they all mean?","author":"j2sw","date":"November 2, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"As a service provider you have a mountain of terms to deal with. As you dive into the realm of BGP, you will hear many terms in regards to peers. \u00a0Knowing their names AND your definition of them will serve you well. \u00a0I emphasized the and in the last sentence\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "BGP"","block_context":{"text":"BGP","link":"https:\/\/www.mtin.net\/blog\/category\/networking\/bgp\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1309,"url":"https:\/\/www.mtin.net\/blog\/how-i-learned-to-love-bgp-communities-and-so-can-you\/","url_meta":{"origin":1832,"position":2},"title":"How I learned to love BGP communities, and so can you","author":"j2sw","date":"July 6, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"BGP communities can be a powerful, but almost mystical thing. \u00a0If you aren't familiar with communities start here at Wikipedia. \u00a0For the purpose of part one of this article we will talk about communities and how they can be utilized for traffic coming into your network.\u00a0Part two of this article\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "BGP"","block_context":{"text":"BGP","link":"https:\/\/www.mtin.net\/blog\/category\/networking\/bgp\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1497,"url":"https:\/\/www.mtin.net\/blog\/bgp-local-pref-and-you\/","url_meta":{"origin":1832,"position":3},"title":"BGP local Pref and you","author":"j2sw","date":"January 7, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"One of the bgp topics that comes up from time to time is what does \"bgp local-pref\" do for me? The short answer is it allows you to prefer which direction a traffic will flow to a given destination. How can this help you? Well before we start, remember the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "BGP"","block_context":{"text":"BGP","link":"https:\/\/www.mtin.net\/blog\/category\/networking\/bgp\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2133,"url":"https:\/\/www.mtin.net\/blog\/justin-wispamerica\/","url_meta":{"origin":1832,"position":4},"title":"Justin @ WISPAMERICA","author":"j2sw","date":"March 5, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"I will be attending WISPAMERICA next week. 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Life is good. \u00a0Monday morning comes, you hop in your 600\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Networking"","block_context":{"text":"Networking","link":"https:\/\/www.mtin.net\/blog\/category\/networking\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtin.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1832"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtin.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtin.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtin.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtin.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1832"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtin.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1832\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1834,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtin.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1832\/revisions\/1834"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtin.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtin.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtin.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtin.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}