Re: Why doesn't BGP...

[Deepak Jain]

Can't you adjust your metrics/weights to prefer the low speed links less?

-Deepak.

On Fri, 8 Nov 1996, Ed Morin wrote:

> With all the recent talk about BGP, etc., I thought I'd see if anybody
> knows the reasoning behind a particular short-coming of BGP that I've
> noticed and found particularly bothersome...
> 
> We peer, using BGP, with several "backbone" provider networks for transit
> purposes.  Some of these links are "faster" than others (e.g. T-3 vs.
> multiple T-1 and single T-1) for various reasons.  If our router sees
> a route to a particular destination via a "high-speed" link and a "low-
> speed" link that has the _same_ number of AS "hops", it picks the link
> with the "lowest" IP address!  (At least that's what I'm told and what
> I observe...)
> 
> Why doesn't BGP pick the link with the highest bandwidth, or, better
> yet, pick the link with the highest bandwidth AND least congestion to
> label as the "best" available route?  The needed information is avail-
> able in the router (and if it was somebody doing BGP from a host that
> was separate from the box with the interfaces, well, then too bad I
> guess) and can't be _that_ hard to incorporate can it?
> 
> I'll get off my soapbox now...
> 
> Ed
> 
> 
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