In this clip we will discuss where a national research and education network will need to use BGP. There are two basic models of service for NRENs that we've seen around the world. A peering network that provides a limited set of routes, that does not provide complete internet access. The peering NREN provides routes that will exchange traffic between connected members and to the rest of the global research and education networking community. It might also provide routes to a local internet exchange that will move traffic to customers of those local internet exchange service providers, to Google and other services that are present at the exchange point. A more common model is that the NREN provides complete internet access including optimized routes to the global research and education networking community. When the NREN is a peering network you can see that the NREN must have provider independent address space on all external router interfaces including those connected to the internet exchange, other RENs and connected university members. When the REN acts as an ISP you can see that the REN not only connects to the REN ecosystem, but it will also purchase Internet service from an Internet service provider. In this case the NREN must have provider independent address space configured on all external router interfaces connecting to the upstream providers including the ISPs, internet exchanges and other RENs. In our experience most NRENs around the world provide full internet access. There are only a few that we've seen that do peering only. They have found that a peering only network is the easiest to implement from a political perspective. Often ISPs are threatened by NRENs. They will lobby against the formation of the NREN and do whatever they can to subvert the formation of the NREN. However, when the NREN is a peering only network it makes it much more difficult for the individual members that are served by the NREN when the NREN is a peering at work it means that the NREN only provides connectivity to a portion of the internet so that connected members must have a second connection to an Internet service provider so that they have full access to the internet. Using these two connections is not simple. It is not like having two ISP connections that can be used as a redundant backup or load-balanced. It requires BGP at the campus level to make it work right. We will explore the campus use of BGP in a separate video clip.

Related Documents

Exercises

© Produced by Philip Smith and the Network Startup Resource Center, through the University of Oregon. 

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