Bgp?

I work for a rather large enterprise. Our data center is located in Memphis, TN. I work as an on site tech at one of the manufacturing facilities 150 miles away. From my location, we have another manufacturing facility about 10 miles away. One location has a DS3 P2P to the data center and the other location has 2 T1 P2Ps to the Data Center. Users from these two locations often require access to the resources of the other, but are experiencing delays when attempting to access the other site. This has happened since I started working for them 3 years ago.

Our network engineer and I have talked about the possiblity of another P2P to connect the sites directly to remove the data center from the mix, thus removing the round robin effect. I was talking to him last night, when he brought up the idea of enabling BGP. I am currently studying for CCENT and do not know what all BGP does and how it would resolve our issue. Can someone enlighten me? I have a video conference in 4 hours, where our network engineer will be asking permission from the Director, I would like to know what all he is talking about.

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Comments

Forsaken_GA

I'll be frank, there's no way you're going to get a solid grasp on BGP in 4 hours.

If you're serious about learning BGP, your best bet is to pick up Internet Routing Architectures by Sam Halabi.

Without knowing the layout of your network, it's hard to say whether this is a good solution. If you're not running BGP with your service providers already, then enabling BGP for a point to point link of two directly connected sites is..... overkill to say the least.

ColbyG

^ what he said

Give us some more details.

Monkerz

So I need to pick up that book. I know I will get to BGP eventually in my studies, but have not reached that point as of yet.

I don't know what all you would need to know about my network. Border hardware? Circuits? As of now, we are not running BGP for these two sites. And the idea would be to not purchase another P2P and go with BGP instead.

I have also brought up the idea of implementing frame relay, with that having a VC between the two sites would likely remedy our delay. The VC would be controlled through Verizon’s MPLS network, and that, I think would be the answer, but currently we have no means of reviewing statistical data, because neither Verizon nor Time Warner or AT&T have ever bothered to provides a means of monitoring the circuits. So our methodology has always been based on short term testing that we’ve done.

networker050184

Well, BPG isn't going to fix any kind of delay. Its just a routing protocol. If there is only one way it can reach that site then what would a routing protocol do to help?

Turgon

Monkerz wrote: »

I work for a rather large enterprise. Our data center is located in Memphis, TN. I work as an on site tech at one of the manufacturing facilities 150 miles away. From my location, we have another manufacturing facility about 10 miles away. One location has a DS3 P2P to the data center and the other location has 2 T1 P2Ps to the Data Center. Users from these two locations often require access to the resources of the other, but are experiencing delays when attempting to access the other site. This has happened since I started working for them 3 years ago.

Our network engineer and I have talked about the possiblity of another P2P to connect the sites directly to remove the data center from the mix, thus removing the round robin effect. I was talking to him last night, when he brought up the idea of enabling BGP. I am currently studying for CCENT and do not know what all BGP does and how it would resolve our issue. Can someone enlighten me? I have a video conference in 4 hours, where our network engineer will be asking permission from the Director, I would like to know what all he is talking about.

Difficult for any of us to advise you on the particulars as so much is unknown about your existing routing arrangements. If your network engineer is proposing to use BGP then he has some reasons, many of which you will neither understand or be aware of. For example BGP may already be running for your uplinks to the DC or there may be a corporate shift towards it. With the two sites connected to the DC already and a proposed site to site P2P between the manufacturing sites you have a classic triangulation of potential paths to get to places. Routing protocol choices offer resilient pathways and potential load sharing possibilities. You may be using those connections to the DCs to get to the internet so thats a possible factor behind the BGP thinking.

I would say hang in on the meeting and roll with what is discussed. You could offer questions about resilience and load sharing and see what comes back.

In terms of learning BGP I would lay off until you get out of the meeting. Its a challenging subject and requires time to absorb.

Ahriakin

At the most basic I'll presume you understand the idea (and benefits) of Dynamic routing (OSPF, EIGRP etc.). BGP is a heavily policy based Dynamic Routing protocol, i.e. you have a huge amount of manual control of how and when routes are propagated from end to end on your network (and of course beyond it). The main difference here is most other IGPs are promiscuous in that you simply enable them on interfaces/links, yes you can tune some parameters but by default they want to tell everyone on the same L2 everything (well not quite but for comparison sake...). BGP will only talk to who you choose based on existing layer 3 information, ie. the peer does not need to be directly connected at layer to for peering to occur (nor do you need tunnels etc. as a workaround), if you can reach it from your IGP routing table you can peer with it. It is incredibly configurable but slow to converge.

BGP is rarely used for internal routing (it's just too slow), but it can be.
Most enterprises will use it for redundant ISP links because of it's versatility in deciding how multiple external routes are handled.

Monkerz

I appreciate your replies. I think I may have to sit on the sidelines for this one. I think I am in over my head as of now. I'm going to leave it to our engineer to figure out for the time being. I hope soon, I too will understand...

Thanks Again!!