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Evaluate your provider's uplinks
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Evaluate your provider's uplinks

flricharflrichar Member
edited January 2013 in Tutorials

I've been a unix and network admin for a while now. I've had the pleasure of working with plenty of backbone providers, some of them seem better than others. One I absolutely love is Hurricane Electric. Not only do they have a free ipv6 tunnelbroker, you can take their test, I think I passed the sage level a few years ago, but they also have some other great utilties. Check out dns.he.net for some free dns utils. Some of you may already be aware of these awesome tools.

But my favorite is their bgp site bgp.he.net. You can type an ip, subnet, AS number or name in the search box and get tall kinds of good information. I setup a previous employer with an ipv6 subnet, then after I left I've used this tool to find out they decided not to continue advertising it. You can type your provider's name in there and get a feel for who they peer with, how many different connections they have, their IP subnets... it's pretty useful.

Comments

  • HE is typically not a popular provider. They are definitely on the cheaper end of the spectrum and have some really crazy routes at times.

  • +1 for http://bgp.he.net though.

  • Why would I want to spam?

  • Guys stop being mean to the new guy! He's just here to share and learn. We all started somewhere.

    HE is basically "the" budget provider out there. They do have a market advantage in IPv6 with free transit and all, but their bandwidth quality is really all over the place, complete hit/miss. But at $0.7/mbps on a 1G commit, it's hard not to be tempted to buy.

    And for all the technical glory they have with bgp.he.net and lg.he.net, I still curse at them daily for not having in/out BGP communities support other than blackhole. For a "tier-1" provider, that's really something I gripe with, every, single, day.

  • Well, I should have clarified. I've never had them as a provider. All of my interaction with them has been positive, despite not actually using their service (other than the free stuff!).

  • Ya, have to agree with @KernelSanders here, can't say He.net is per se a preferred provider. They are cheaper and decent for the price. Makes a good option if you need a mix to go along with Cogent, but defiantly not considered premium bandwidth. I would rather have nLayer, Telia, Tinet, Abovenet, XO, NTT,Yellowfiber if you are talking good premium bandwidth.

    Don't get me wrong, I take advantage of their ipv6 tunnel broker and they have some really cool tools and educational stuff, but they wouldn't per se be a "Favorite" provider for bandwidth outside of ipv6.

    my 2 cents.

    Cheers!

  • Here is another useful site similar to bgp.he.net - http://www.ris.ripe.net/dashboard/
    But it's sloooow.

  • ugh. ripe tools stuff is just awful.

    they should die a painful death. instead they want to charge for everything now.

    at least get webupdates to work reliably.

  • @MiguelQ said: spam?

    I don't see how opening up a harmless discussion is regarded as spam.

  • Also very important: http://as.robtex.com/

  • @gsrdgrdghd said: Also very important: http://as.robtex.com/

    Nah, in recent years it's data is way outdated and the site is spam filled/junk.

  • I was curious, so I typed in bgp in the search box and didn't see any replies. I was thinking, what? No conversations about prefixes or bgp advertising? It can't be! ;)

  • @unused said: Nah, in recent years it's data is way outdated and the site is spam filled/junk.

    Are there any other sites that can make nice graphs such as this or this or this?

    @flrichar said: I was curious, so I typed in bgp in the search box and didn't see any replie

    The Vanilla search function is really crappy, you'd besser use Google to search LET

  • @flrichar said: Why would I want to spam?

    My bad, sorry

  • @MiguelQ Not a problem. :)

  • By the way, one of my IP from Digital Ocean cannot be found at bgp.he.net

  • Oh. I did not found that ip in bgp.he.net this morning. But now it is showing up. However, without much information.

  • @flrichar said: I think I passed the sage level a few years ago,

    If you did you can get a free t-shirt.. I got mine! WHO DOESN'T LAVA FREE STUFF?

  • @David_P Yea, but I've moved since I passed the test, who knows where my shirt ended up. :(

  • @flrichar said: @David_P Yea, but I've moved since I passed the test, who knows where my shirt ended up. :(

    I'm sure if you really wanted it the support would send you another. Their pretty nice.

  • bgp.he.net is one of those must have bookmarks for various lookups and tests you need to do frequently.

    robtex.com is another real useful site mentioned.

    HE bandwidth, ho-hum. By itself, not so good. In a mix with Cogent and a quality upstream, pretty good. (Best example is Wholesale Internet in Kansas City with this mix).

  • KuJoeKuJoe Member, Host Rep

    I wish HE IPv6 would talk to Cogent IPv6. Caused some headaches a while back for us when Level3 had routing issues in FL.

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