From: Howard C. Berkowitz (hcb@gettcomm.com)
Date: Wed Dec 24 2003 - 21:33:13 GMT-3
At 6:34 PM -0500 12/24/03, Volkov Dmitry wrote:
>Pardon, Howard,
>
>What do You consider UNDERKILL:
>1) BGP Design and Implementation isbn 1587051095 Authors: Randy Zhang
>Micah Bartell
>OR
>2) Halabi book
>OR
>3) Both above
>
I haven't read the first, so can't comment. _Cisco ISP Essentials_
(Cisco Press) by Barry Greene and Pbill Smith is excellent at
getting a much broader view of Internet operations. Geoff Huston's
_ISP Survival Guide_ and my _Building Service Provider Networks_,
both from Wiley, are complementary. Geoff is more focused on the
economics, and I tend to look at the customer-provider interface in
more detail, including physical techniques and non-BGP multihoming. I
go into more RPSL than the others.
By underkill, I am saying that a CCIE R&S simply doesn't prepare
anyone for complex ISP operations. I can't comment on the ISP
certification, not having read the Cisco BGP course.
As I said, I could configure BGP, but I really didn't understand WHY
I would want to use a particular knob until I understood more RPSL
and had more exposure to the Internet operations community. For
anyone with any interest in "real" BGP, I encourage looking through
the archives at www.nanog.org. The versions on the FTP server below
correct some errors in my last Atlanta presentations, and should be
replacing the ones on NANOG when the people there have a chance to
update them.
As a holiday present to all, I've just put up an anonymous FTP server at:
www.netcases.net
login anonymous/email address
There are two directories, presentations and internet-drafts, which
contain various public presentations of mine. I'll be adding to them.
There's nothing in the HTTP side yet, but Something Interesting Will
Be There Real Soon Now.
> > -----Original Message-----
>> From: nobody@groupstudy.com [mailto:nobody@groupstudy.com]On
>> Behalf Of Howard C. Berkowitz
>> Sent: Wednesday, December 24, 2003 6:15 PM
>> To: ccielab@groupstudy.com
>> Subject: RE: Bassam Halabi's Internet Routing Architecture
>>
>>
>> At 2:54 PM -0800 12/24/03, Shafi, Shahid wrote:
>> >Yes CCIE2b,
>> >
>> >I am just going through "BGP Design and Implemetation". The book
>> >approach is Case-Study based and there are lot of configs
>> examples all
>> >over. I still feel it is a OVERKILL for CCIE Lab though. But no doubt
>> >its worth the investment if you want hands-on approach to BGP.
>> >
>>
>> Eeek. And I consider it UNDERKILL for real world BGP, at least for
>> any serious ISP applications or even complex enterprise
>> backbone-of-backbones.
>>
>> I'm not sure what you mean by "hands-on" in this context. Personally,
>> I didn't really understand BGP until I backed up and really got
>> familiar with routing policy, then RIPE-181, now the Routing Policy
>> Specification Language: http://www.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc2622.txt or
>> the tutorial http://www.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc2650.txt. Understanding
>> (and participating in) RPSL at least let me have a real understanding
>> of what routing policies do, although it took a good deal more work
>> in operations forums to feel comfortable explaining all the tools
>> relevant to Internet operations, ranging from justifying and
>> obtaining IP address space and AS numbers, to tracking IP allocations
>> such that you can get more when you use it up, to multiprovider
>> peering and how exchange points work, etc.
>>
>> As a side note, I recently gave a private class that would have
>> involved labs on the customer-ISP interface. There were some
>> unrelated hardware problems that prevented setup, but about the
>> minimum configuration that I could build of a "simulated Internet"
>> took at least 6 routers, each with the ability to have a good many
>> subinterfaces via VLAN or Frame switching. I would really have liked
>> a Zebra box, probably front-ended with a router, and run additional
>> services such as a routing registry either on the Zebra box or other
>> UNIX boxes. You need to have the ability to have at least 5 routers,
> > each running a different ASN, to show significant AS path issues. At
>> least one AS should have two or more physical routers to show
>> multi-POP issues, and obviously even more if you are getting into any
>> complexity of route reflection.
>>
>> In other words, at least one or more CCIE pod-equivalents to generate
>> the external routes. As long as the routers run BGP, they don't have
>> to be very big if you frame switch them, although old routers might
>> not run the images with features of interest. My setup was mostly
>> 3640's, but that was what was on hand.
>>
>> I'm looking into the possibility of virtual classes with such a setup
>> and curriculum, but haven't yet decided if there's a market.
>>
>> ______________________________________________________________
>> _________
>> Please help support GroupStudy by purchasing your study
>> materials from:
>> http://shop.groupstudy.com
>>
>> Subscription information may be found at:
>> http://www.groupstudy.com/list/CCIELab.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Sat Jan 03 2004 - 08:25:44 GMT-3