[isp-bgp] RE: Smaller ISP, do we need full BGP routes?

["Kevin Schoen" <schoen.kevin@...]

Anthony, 

I would recommend that you get full inbound routes from all providers as
this will provide the most efficient path for your traffic. 

A 7206 vxr npe 300 can easily handle over a dozen BGP sessions with no
issues. On one 7206 vxr we have over 35 bgp sessions with 3 provider
providing full routes. 

Make sure you are running ip cef on your cisco, as this will lower the
CPU and switch the traffic faster. 

I wouldn't worry unless your CPU is running 70% plus. You can use MRTG
to graph the CPU also. 

-----Original Message-----
From: Anthony Guida [mailto:imdacrazy1@...Sent: Thursday, July 31, 2003 11:43 AM
To: isp-bgp@isp-bgp.com
Subject: [isp-bgp] Smaller ISP, do we need full BGP routes?

Hello,

I work for a smaller ISP in Chicago and we are running
a multi-homed BGP environment with 2 backbone
providers. Our edge router is a 7206VXR (NPE300) with
256MB of RAM. We have 6 T1s plugged into this router,
3 to each backbone provider. We are also currently
taking full BGP feeds from both providers.

I have been noticing somewhat of an increase in CPU
and memory usage on the edge router in the past few
months and would like to get some assistance on
whether or not we should be taking full BGP feeds
since I understand this takes up a lot of CPU and
memory. Another reason for this performance/latency
throughout our network.

According to our MRTG graphs, I can say 99 percent of
our traffic is inbound. Since we are an ISP, everyone
is downloading images and files more than uploading
like a web hosting provider would. What I mean is
taking full BGP feeds for outbound traffic really
shouldn't matter. We should just take partial or
default routes and let our backbone providers decide
where to send the outbound traffic. Our inbound
traffic is determined through our AS prepending &
advertisements config.

I would like to know what is recommended. Should we be
accepting full BGP feeds and deal with the CPU & Mem
usage? Or should we be taking only partial with a
default?
What is best practice or what are other network
engineers doing with similar environments?

Any information is greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Anthony



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------------------------ANNOUNCEMENT---------------------------------
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           ISPCON FALL 2003 - Santa Clara Convention Center
     October 20-22 - The Definitive Event Wired and Wireless ISPs
                            www.ispcon.com
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