[afnog] IP transit and Load Balancing

[Joey ESQUIBAL]

Hi Mark,


> On Jun 10, 2015, at 10:43 AM, Mark Tinka <mark.tinka at seacom.mu> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On 9/Jun/15 18:25, Joey ESQUIBAL wrote:
>> Dear AfNOG,
>> 
>> I trust this e-mail finds everyone well.
>> 
>> May I ask your opinion and or best practice about having multiple IP transit to 4 different IPLC's.
>> 
>> For argument’s sake, I have allocated sample capacities on each circuit below:
>> 
>> IPLC 1 (1 x STM4) => IP Transit 1
>> IPLC 2 (1 x STM4) => IP Transit 2
>> IPLC 3 (2 x STM1) => IP Transit 1
>> IPLC 4 (2 x STM1) => IP Transit 2
>> 
>> All circuit ends to different geographical locations.
>> 
>> I’m thinking of having two IP transit (which I think should be good already) and advertise specific prefix(es) on each peer.
> 
> Possible.
> 
> Since you're multi-homing to the same ISP's, you could ask each of them to let you know whether they support BGP communities that would     allow you to influence routing within their network through the use of LOCAL_PREF, AS_PATH prepend, e.t.c.
> 
> This way, you can make your announcements uniform to avoid breaking down prefixes, or you could break down prefixes but attach a NO_EXPORT community to them, together with other BGP communities your providers may support, so you get the load sharing without the     global pollution.
> 
> In case your providers do not support BGP communities you can use, then you may announce prefixes across each link as you see fit, focusing on which PoP's are closer to the destinations your customers are trying to reach, and getting as much bandwidth as you can through those without running those links hot, in order to reduce administration.

Many thanks again for your recommendations. All are noted and highly appreciated.

In terms of outbound traffic, can you also recommend what’s the best practice and or ways on how to influence and load balance outbound traffic? 


> 
> Mark.