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"BGP at home": getting a DIA circuit installed at home

aaka.sh

11–20 of 102 posts

Re: "BGP at home": getting a DIA circuit installed at home

#11
post #2

But why?

If I had more money than sense, I’d do the same thing. If I was filthy rich (which I’m not and probably never will be), I’d build a data centre in my mansion and buy a brand new IBM mainframe and stick it in there. Because I can. For the same reason other rich people build some huge garage with dozens of cars in it.

It sounds like they wanted 2 separate network paths but they still end up with only 1 where they can use BGP. Maybe they can still use their residential connection as failover, with a VPN to a VPS where they can use BGP?

Re: "BGP at home": getting a DIA circuit installed at home

#12
post #2

But why?

Besides the stated reason, there's also this:

>(as of this writing, VZ was pricing 50Mbps commited @ $455/mo; 100Mbps @ $661/mo; 1Gbps @ $999/mo; 5Gbps @ $2,099/mo; and 10Gbps @ $3,099/mo).

Ten gigabit is not yet a common residential internet service in North America. If that's what you want, this would be the only way to get it.

I've occasionally daydreamed about buying a condominium near one of the Seattle Internet Exchange's PoPs, buying a 400 gigabit port, paying to run a fiber pair, arranging for transit, etc etc. https://www.seattleix.net/join As expensive and pointless as buying a yacht, but at least getting it online would require a lot of tedious work!

(Like OP, I also jumped through the hoops for a Comcast fiber drop years ago (but to a business location) for the same eyewatering price but dramatically fewer megabits per second. The only upside is that the pair traveled directly to a CO in the same office park, so we would routinely see 1-2ms pings to anycast IPs like 4.2.2.2, 8.8.8.8, etc)

Re: "BGP at home": getting a DIA circuit installed at home

#13

I'm curious to know details like what sort of house or dwelling this person lives in; anyplace with enough capacity for all that (4U rack space, power and cooling, etc.) seems spacious. The article says it's right off a major street. So is it urban? Suburban? Single-family home? Inquiring minds want to know.

Just so you know, 4U of rack space is a whopping 7 inches of height. One rack holds many Us, with most "full size" racks clocking in at 42U.

Open-air racks are typically less than 2 feet across and 3-4 feet deep (example [1]), hardly a significant stretch unless you live in a very small space.

1: https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-Open-Frame-Server-Rack/d...

Re: "BGP at home": getting a DIA circuit installed at home

#14

I'm curious to know details like what sort of house or dwelling this person lives in; anyplace with enough capacity for all that (4U rack space, power and cooling, etc.) seems spacious. The article says it's right off a major street. So is it urban? Suburban? Single-family home? Inquiring minds want to know.

4u of space is less volume than many PC cases. I’ve got a 22u “half rack” in my apartment (half for testing gear for work, half because I like to tinker). Bigger concern would be noise. 1u network gear tends to have high pitched 20mm fans which can drive you nuts if you don’t have it in a separate room. Noctua makes a great kit I use in my own gear but Verizon probably wouldn’t be very happy with you if you tried to do that :).

I went the route of “find a dirt cheap gigabit colo” ($150/m for quarter rack with gigabit and bgp peering) and just tunnel the IP space back home. Upside is you don’t have to pay to have the circuit put to where you currently live and you don’t have to worry about space/noise. Downside is if you want to use it locally at home you get extra latency due to the tunnel.

Re: "BGP at home": getting a DIA circuit installed at home

#15
post #8
post #3

Why two NIDs?

This is one of the most literal Conway's Law instances I've seen... > organizations design systems that mirror their own communication structure. An org for the physical layer has a box, then the org offering the connectivity layer plugs their box into the first box. Like OSI layers stacking up. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law

It's more likely to reflect a hierarchy in the network (e.g. monomode span dropping down to multimode for the demarc). The telco just colocated their box on the subscriber's premises.

Re: "BGP at home": getting a DIA circuit installed at home

#16

I'm curious to know details like what sort of house or dwelling this person lives in; anyplace with enough capacity for all that (4U rack space, power and cooling, etc.) seems spacious. The article says it's right off a major street. So is it urban? Suburban? Single-family home? Inquiring minds want to know.

4u of space is less volume than many PC cases. I’ve got a 22u “half rack” in my apartment (half for testing gear for work, half because I like to tinker). Bigger concern would be noise. 1u network gear tends to have high pitched 20mm fans which can drive you nuts if you don’t have it in a separate room. Noctua makes a great kit I use in my own gear but Verizon probably wouldn’t be very happy with you if you tried to…

> Downside is if you want to use it locally at home you get extra latency due to the tunnel.

I guess it depends on how your tunnel is set up, but shouldn't you be able to add a static route to your rack on the "home side"?

Re: "BGP at home": getting a DIA circuit installed at home

#17
post #2

But why?

This is how any larger business (e.g. a hospital, university, anyone doing any serious networking) gets their connectivity these days. Basically the modern equivalent of a T-1.

You get proper service: no random dropouts, and a clueful human on the phone and you could complain about QoS and they'd not laugh in your face.

The different thing here is that the service was provided to a residential building, but that's not entirely unheard of. I've done it myself for example.

Re: "BGP at home": getting a DIA circuit installed at home

#18
post #5
post #2

But why?

Why not? Sounds fun They mention at the top because they didn't want to colocate it. So I imagine they did it because they could?

Probably cheaper than bringing up a second colo if you don't need to host many machines.

Re: "BGP at home": getting a DIA circuit installed at home

#19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

4u of space is less volume than many PC cases. I’ve got a 22u “half rack” in my apartment (half for testing gear for work, half because I like to tinker). Bigger concern would be noise. 1u network gear tends to have high pitched 20mm fans which can drive you nuts if you don’t have it in a separate room. Noctua makes a great kit I use in my own gear but Verizon probably wouldn’t be very happy with you if you tried to…

> Downside is if you want to use it locally at home you get extra latency due to the tunnel. I guess it depends on how your tunnel is set up, but shouldn't you be able to add a static route to your rack on the "home side"?

If your use case is just to use the unique space locally then you don't need BGP at all but the second you want to use it elsewhere you incur the latency of going through the tunnel.

Re: "BGP at home": getting a DIA circuit installed at home

#20
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I had more money than sense, I’d do the same thing. If I was filthy rich (which I’m not and probably never will be), I’d build a data centre in my mansion and buy a brand new IBM mainframe and stick it in there. Because I can. For the same reason other rich people build some huge garage with dozens of cars in it.

It sounds like they wanted 2 separate network paths but they still end up with only 1 where they can use BGP. Maybe they can still use their residential connection as failover, with a VPN to a VPS where they can use BGP?

They all likey traverse the same physical path and would all be taken out by the same gravel truck hitting a pole. The two connection thing was I think more about defense against random retail connectivity flaps (someone decides to upgrade a router's firmware and just takes the town offline, meanwhile nobody answers support calls, that sort of thing).
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