[120389] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Chinese bgp metering story
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jonny Martin)
Fri Dec 18 14:26:15 2009
From: Jonny Martin <jonny@pch.net>
To: Fred Baker <fred@cisco.com>
In-Reply-To: <3B15EFF7-795B-4FF9-9D43-8F522F66E6C0@cisco.com>
Date: Sat, 19 Dec 2009 02:24:57 +0700
Cc: North American Network Operators Group <nanog@merit.edu>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
On Dec 19, 2009, at 1:47 AM, Fred Baker wrote:
> I can read tea leaves with the best of them, and the tea leaves I
> see tell me the reporter (in the story the blog points to) doesn't
> have a clue. What is the substance of the proposal?
The report seemed a reasonably accurate account of what went on in
Kampala.
> But what is all this about "is the ITU interested in changing BGP"?
> If the word "metering" makes any sense in context, BGP doesn't meter
> anything.
The Chinese delegation presented a dozen pages of formulae involving
20+ variables, infinite sums, and other mathematical goodies. Wowing
the audience I guess. The whole way through "using BGP" was mentioned
- in the sense of pulling data from, and adding data to BGP for the
purposes of evaluating these formulae. It was clear that BGP would be
used - and modified if need be - to achieve this. Mixing billing with
the reachability information signalled through BGP just doesn't seem
like a good idea.
Interesting to note was that nowhere was the intent of all this
mentioned, which is presumably to calculate the "value" each and every
party's traffic traversing a link generates, and to apportion "costs"
accordingly.
Misguided, nonsensical, and unworkable ideas often gain traction.
It's important that this one doesn't.
Cheers,
Jonny.
