Strange practices?

[Joel.Snyder at Opus1.COM (Joel M Snyder)]

On 6/7/10 11:51 PM:
> Has anyone ever heard of a multi-homed enterprise not running bgp with
> either of 2 providers, but instead, each provider statically routes a block
> to their common customer and also each originates this block in BGP?

Yes, this is common and works fine.  We do it with a number of customers 
who want a backup provider but don't want to go to the trouble of 
getting portable address space, an ASN, and so on.  As long as both 
providers have a way of shutting down the advertisement (typically 
because they learn it via BGP) and as long as the customer doesn't try 
to load balance (i.e., treats it as active/passive not true 
active/active), then it's not a bad solution.  Ugly, but given the vast 
chalice of despair that is the global BGP table, hardly a drop in the 
bucket.

jms
-- 
Joel M Snyder, 1404 East Lind Road, Tucson, AZ, 85719
Senior Partner, Opus One       Phone: +1 520 324 0494
jms at Opus1.COM                http://www.opus1.com/jms