From: Brian (nanog) ("Brian)
Date: Thu Mar 03 2005 - 20:33:06 EST
James [mailto:] wrote:
>They are not playing with the core. The result of what they are
>doing is dependent on specific topology and level of direction
>they are throwing prefixes at.
>While I will not dispute your statement, I believe that every
>ASN should be responsible of their own and should not trust the
>General Internet to not cause harm on their network. If your
>router is going to crash b/c of someone advertising an unusual
>AS_PATH, I don't view that differently from a box getting owned
>because it was running unpatched OS since 1999 without any
>firewall rules either.
>-J
I think most of the concern comes from the fact that this
"experiment" is being done on a network that many people rely
upon for various reasons, and it's unknown side effects have are
in the scope of global financial/communication/emergency crisises.
It might not cause any harm, but I'd think you guys could have
probably come up with a better test bed than using other people's
equipment and networks without permission and risking unforseen
disasters. Why wasn't this experiment tested in a lab
environment? We don't test new pharmaceuticals directly on humans
in the first round of testing, and after they've been proven safe
on animals, the tests then go on to compensated volunteers....
Even if this type of experiment fell into compliance with the
RFCs, it surely wasn't the intended use of AS-PATHS and should
be considered experimental, and therefore tested in a lab setting.
The risks imposed by using the global internet routing
infrastructure as your testbed far outweigh any benefits your tool
might realize.
If this "experiment" that you're running causes downtime for
someone elses systems, are you willing to pay for the damages?
-Brian
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