[147544] in North American Network Operators' Group
Multiple ISP Load Balancing
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Holmes,David A)
Wed Dec 14 14:08:13 2011
From: "Holmes,David A" <dholmes@mwdh2o.com>
To: "nanog@nanog.org" <nanog@nanog.org>
Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2011 11:07:04 -0800
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
From time to time some have posted questions asking if BGP load balancers s=
uch as the old Routescience Pathcontrol device are still around, and if not=
what have others found to replace that function. I have used the Routescie=
nce device with much success 10 years ago when it first came on the market,=
but since then a full BGP feed has become much larger, Routescience has be=
en bought by Avaya, then discontinued, and other competitors such as Sockey=
e, Netvmg have been acquired by other companies.
Doing some research on how load balancing can be accomplished in 2011, I ha=
ve come across Cisco's performance routing feature, and features from load =
balancing companies such as F5's Link Controller. I have always found BGP t=
o be easy to work with, and an elegant, simple solution to load balancing u=
sing a route-reflector configuration in which one BGP client (Routescience =
Pathcontrol in my background) learns the best route to destination networks=
, and then announces that best route to BGP border routers using common and=
widely understood BGP concepts such as communities and local pref, and fou=
nd this to lead to a deterministic Internet routing architecture. This requ=
ired a knowledge only of IETF standards (common BGP concepts and configurat=
ions), required no specialized scripting, or any other knowledge lying outs=
ide IETF boundaries, and it seemed reasonable to expect that network engine=
ers should eagerly and enthusiastically want to master this technology, jus=
t as any other technology must be mastered to run high availability network=
s.
So I am wondering if anyone has experience with implementing load balancing=
across multiple ISP links in 2011, and if there have been any comparisons =
between IETF standards-based methods using BGP, and other proprietary metho=
ds which may use a particular vendor's approach to solving the same problem=
, but involves some complexity with more variables to be plugged in to the =
architecture.
David
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