How to gauge the quality of a provider's network

[D. Strout]

Very nice info.  Definitely would like thoughts on what everyone on VPSBoard thinks EGI should add to our mix.

AS18779

That's not a bad mix as-is. Though I'm not a huge fan of nLayer, it looks like you have a nice amount of HE and Level3, which is good. IPv6 is a bit heavy on HE, but then 80% of IPv6 traffic always goes through HE anyway, and they do have a nice network. With the Level3 there too, you're good to go. I am curious about the Black Lotus in there. Is that incoming only for DDoS protection?

 

[egihosting]

Yes, Blacklotus is just for incoming DDOS. Auto-null is not a favorite for a few so Blacklotus gives them another option.

Re-read your post. Cogent and HE together... That's something I'll have my Network team look at.

Thanks again.

 

[Pmadd]

nLayer has some occasional weird routing to me so I don't like it very much, but otherwise your network looks great.

 

[Reece-DM]

Nice topic indeed,

With a bit of luck people will investigate there networks more

 

[Magiobiwan]

I'd like to see some AboveNet if you can get it. A good chunk of Oregon is fed off of AboveNet.

 

[yolo]

The circle graphs on bgp.he.net are not the weight of the networks. It doesn't have anything to do with that. 

 

[zomgmike]

One thing I didn't see mentioned yet is the importance of doing all those traceroutes during different times of the day.  You might see really different results during peak hours.  You can also check if it's being observed by others by cross referencing that with http://www.internettrafficreport.com/ and http://www.internetpulse.net/

 

[D. Strout]

The circle graphs on bgp.he.net are not the weight of the networks. It doesn't have anything to do with that. 

I figured as much, but I'm still not clear on what they do represent. Does HE just make them up?

 

[yolo]

I figured as much, but I'm still not clear on what they do represent. Does HE just make them up?

It has to do with how many hops and how long it takes to get to certain "sensors"

This is a good example of how it makes the percentages:

https://stat.ripe.net/widget/as-path-length#w.resource=AS20473

Its abstract and kind of hard to comprehend. 

 

[VPSCorey]

Networks are constantly changing and evolving some hosts allow equal outbound policy while inbound policy is set to the cheapest network link (great for absorbing DDOS without getting huge bills) some allow equal inbound policy.  Many adjust policy as necessary, mainly outbound path selection, we have very little control over inbound policy, upstreams can strip our prepending or ignore it completely.  I've seen traffic cross Level3 and they dump it to Cogent despite a connection with Level3 and the same network pathing.  Level3 just determined pushing traffic out that link was in their best interests.

 

[ComputerTrophy]

We've got a complicated peering contract. Our peers in decreasing order are: Level 3, Zayo/Abovenet and Internap. We have contracts with Zayo and Internap, and Level 3 is a DC contract. We use Cogent and Tier point as backup peers.