[76585] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Dampening considered harmful? (Was: Re: verizon.net and other
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jerry Pasker)
Thu Dec 16 18:21:59 2004
In-Reply-To: <20041216221924.GD60214@puck.nether.net>
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 17:21:23 -0600
To: nanog@merit.edu
From: Jerry Pasker <info@n-connect.net>
Errors-To: owner-nanog-outgoing@merit.edu
>
> i've been wondering, since most people aren't using a
>25xx class router for bgp anymore, and the forwarding planes
>are able to cope more when 'bad things(tm)' happen, what the value
>of dampening is these days.
>
> ie: does dampening cause more problems than it tries to solve/avoid
>these days.
>
> - jared
>
I don't know what takes more router resources; dampening enabled
doing the dampening calculations, or no dampening and constantly
churning the BGP table. I would assume dampening generally saves
router resources, or operators wouldn't chose to enable it.
I don't know about the rest of the network operators, but the threat
of ever being dampened makes me much more careful with my network in
general. My general practice is that if a transit line has problems,
it's BGP session is put in an admin down state ASAP until the
problems can be isolated and corrected.
It is my humble little opinion that the threat of being damped for
some period of time is a great hammer to hold over network operator's
heads. I think it's a 'good thing(tm)' for automatic penalties to go
in to effect for those who are irresponsible with the global routing
table. Even if that means that though no fault of my own, one of my
transit lines flaps, and gets me somewhat damped for an hour.
-Jerry
