back to article Fat-thumbed a BGP entry? Relax, now your pain has a name

Users are familiar with those occasional events in which a sysadmin fat-thumb results in traffic getting deep-sixed – like, for example, this week's huge Telia outage. It's a problem that plagues the Internet and has done for years: the foundational Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) was designed in an era long-gone where sysadmins …

  1. frank ly

    re. "...the Druids of the Internet, ..."

    Do they report to the Elders of the Internet?

    1. Voland's right hand Silver badge

      Re: re. "...the Druids of the Internet, ..."

      The IAB?

    2. P. Lee
      Thumb Up

      Re: re. "...the Druids of the Internet, ..."

      >Do they report to the Elders of the Internet?

      Yes, Jen.

  2. Ruairi

    So, we should name the leaks instead of actually fixing the broken system which is currently in place? Yupp, it's the IETF at work again!

    I'm looking at you, ROA, IRR sets and manual configuration changes. Until we are able to validate a route inside of the BGP process, we will continue to see route leaks.

    Lastly: A niggly point, but Telias outage was due to an IS-IS cost, not a BGP leak.

    1. joeW

      Telias outage was due to an IS-IS cost

      Don't spread that around or tomorrow's Daily Mail will have the headline "ISIS PLOT TO DESTROY INTERNET!"

    2. Yes Me Silver badge
      Holmes

      Re: fixing the broken system

      Strangely enough, before fixing a complex problem, it's generally better to understand the details. And if it was easy to fix, it just might have been done already. And if you know how to validate a route in the general case without human eyes on it, please write the RFC immediately.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: fixing the broken system

        .... beginnings of a solution can be found here:

        https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-idr-route-leak-detection-mitigation/

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    But, but, but...the Internet should just work...

    ...always and without any problems.

    Yet we let people make unverified changes to the core network infrastructure and then look surprised when they fuck it up.

  4. Anonymous Coward Silver badge
    Pint

    So what sort of leak do you get when you've drunk too much beer and can't find a toilet?

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    What do you mean "for space, we'll skip the full descriptions given"? Its a web page not a newspaper! Or do you have some kind of storage limit?

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