[c-nsp] L2TP tunnel for BGP peering

[Tim Franklin]

> We were looking at Arbinet(US) to setup our L2TP tunnel BGP 
> session. They have 
> a few major players connected to them. For your information 
> we are planning to 
> run this tunnel through on our current upstream provider. Any 
> thoughts on 
> these?

I still don't understand what you're trying to achieve by this.

- You don't reduce your costs, because all of your bits are still going out
of your current upstream, so you'll still have to pay them whatever you pay
them today.  (In fact, you may pay slightly more, because you'll have L2TP
overhead).

- You don't increase your resilience, because if your current upstream
fails, you can't get L2TP packets to anyone else.

I can see a couple of possible benefits, but both with heavy caveats:

- If your current upstream loses connectivity to some chunk of the Internet,
but still has connectivity to your L2TP peers, you'll maintain connectivity.
If this is likely / regular, sounds like you need a new upstream.

- If the path between you and wherever it is you're trying to reach is
better AS-them -> AS-L2TP-peer -> you than AS-them -> AS-some-set-of ->
AS-your-upstream -> you.  Again, if this is true, it sounds like you need a
new upstream; if yours already has connectivity into the US, why don't they
have interconnects with the people you're trying to talk to?

Regards,
Tim.

-- 
____________   Tim Franklin                 e: tim at colt.net 
\C/\O/\L/\T/   Product Engineering Manager  w: www.colt.net 
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