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Optimizing BGP convergence
When there is a change in the reachability of one or more prefixes, BGP needs to do some work to adapt to that change...
Tier 1 Carriers Performance Report: December, 2022
The report offers specific insights into the performance of major Internet Carriers for the month of December, 2022.
Tier 1 Carriers Performance Report: November, 2022
The report offers specific insights into the performance of major Internet Carriers for the month of November, 2022.
Decoding TCP flags in NetFlow and IPFIX.
In TCP, flags indicate a particular connection state, provide some additional helpful information for troubleshooting purposes, or handle control of a specific connection.
Flags are...
IPv6 Link-Local Next Hop Capability for BGP
When it comes to IPv6, there are several categories of IPv6 addresses, each with its own use case. For example, IPv6 link-Local addresses...
Tier 1 Carriers Performance Report: October, 2022
The report offers specific insights into the performance of major Internet Carriers for the month of October, 2022.
The Number of the Beast or the Practical usage of the Blackhole Community
BGP blackhole filtering is a routing technique used to drop unwanted traffic. Black holes are placed in the parts of a network where...
Tier 1 Carriers Performance Report: September, 2022
The report offers specific insights into the performance of major Internet Carriers for the month of September, 2022.
Tier 1 Carriers Performance Report: August, 2022
The report offers specific insights into the performance of major Internet Carriers for the month of August, 2022.
The ipTTL and ipTotalLength information elements and how they are used for network traffic analysis
Modern networks are getting increasingly complex. So many things can go wrong with them. Business can suffer, and that is something we definitely want...
Tier 1 Carriers Performance Report: July, 2022
The report offers specific insights into the performance of major Internet Carriers for the month of July, 2022.
Tier 1 Carriers Performance Report: June, 2022
The report offers specific insights into the performance of major Internet Carriers for the month of June, 2022.
Tier 1 Carriers Performance Report: May, 2022
The report offers specific insights into the performance of major Internet Carriers for the month of May, 2022.
SNMP evolution and version differences. SNMP security models/levels details.
Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) is a network application layer protocol, initially developed for network management but is now mainly used for network monitoring.
SNMP...
BGP community-based traffic engineering
BGP community attribute is a transitive optional attribute that we use for tagging (marking) a set of prefixes sharing a common property. Every BGP...
Tier 1 Carriers Performance Report: April, 2022
The report offers specific insights into the performance of major Internet Carriers for the month of April, 2022.
IP Transit and the Tiers of Transit Providers
The Internet consists of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) of all shapes and sizes. ISPs have two options when it comes to connecting to the...
Tier 1 Carriers Performance Report: March, 2022
The report offers specific insights into the performance of major Internet Carriers for the month of March, 2022.
The tightening of Internet control in Russia and potential Internet isolation tech intricacies
The Internet is for everyone, yet not everyone accepts that. In light of the news about Cogent Communications and Lumen Technologies disconnecting clients in...
BGP Anycast Best Practices & Configurations
What is Anycast?
Anycast is not a new version of IP or the latest networking technology. The RFC 1546 describing Internet anycasting for IP has...
Tier 1 Carriers Performance Report: February, 2022
The report offers specific insights into the performance of major Internet Carriers for the month of February, 2022.
Tier 1 Carriers Performance Report: January, 2022
The report offers specific insights into the performance of major Internet Carriers for the month of January, 2022.
Tier 1 Carriers Performance Report: December, 2021
The report offers specific insights into the performance of major Internet Carriers for the month of December, 2021.
Setting Flow Table Sizes on Juniper Routers
We often get support tickets from users saying that the amount of data shown in NFA does not correlate with SNMP or is simply...
BGP YANG Model and Configuration
YANG Data Modeling Language
Yet Another Next Generation (YANG) RFC 6020 is standard-based data modeling language for the NETCONF management protocol. YANG is used to...
Source ID and Observation Domain ID fields meaning & configuration details
This article highlights the importance of the Source ID and Observation Domain ID fields when several metering processes are running on the exporter observation...
Tier 1 Carriers Performance Report: November, 2021
The report offers specific insights into the performance of major Internet Carriers for the month of November, 2021.
Interface Names and Descriptions Best Practices and Configuration
The name of a network interface is a string that is generated based on the interface attributes. This is a predictable naming scheme used...
Tier 1 Carriers Performance Report: October, 2021
The report offers specific insights into the performance of major Internet Carriers for the month of October, 2021.
BGP Flow Specification Version 2
BGP Flowspec technology provides a more granular approach to Denial of Service (DoS) attacks mitigation when compared to old-school methods, such as Remotely Triggered...
Tier 1 Carriers Performance Report: September, 2021
The report offers specific insights into the performance of major Internet Carriers for the month of September, 2021.
Pseudowire, MPLS pseudowires, and the MPLS L2 VPN Configuration
In general, a Pseudowire (PW) is an emulation of a point-to-point connection over a packet-switched network (PSN). To put it simply, PW is an...
BGP with Link State (LS) and the reasons for BGP-LS use
In order to get end-to-end visibility for applications, we need complete topology data from IGP domains. One approach is to set up a central...
Tier 1 Carriers Performance Report: August, 2021
The report offers specific insights into the performance of major Internet Carriers for the month of August, 2021.
Free and Open Source NetFlow analyzers. When Free isn’t really Free.
Have you ever found that a network usage reported by your commercial NetFlow analyzer does not match the actual values or that software contains bugs? ...
Tier 1 Carriers Performance Report: July, 2021
The report offers specific insights into the performance of major Internet Carriers for the month of July, 2021.
Oversubscription in Networking
In general, oversubscription is a subscription for more than what is available. Oversubscription represents an intentional business model and is a widespread practice in...
Tier 1 Carriers Performance Report: June, 2021
The report offers specific insights into the performance of major Internet Carriers for the month of June, 2021.
95th percentile and other bandwidth metering methods
There is a lot of confusion around the 95th percentile bandwidth metering. Therefore this blog posting is intended to provide you with detailed information...
Tier 1 Carriers Performance Report: May, 2021
The report offers specific insights into the performance of major Internet Carriers for the month of May, 2021.
Tier 1 Carriers Performance Report: April, 2021
The report offers specific insights into the performance of major Internet Carriers for the month of April, 2021.
Tier 1 Carriers Performance Report: March, 2021
The report offers specific insights into the performance of major Internet Carriers for the month of March, 2021.
Tier 1 Carriers Performance Report: February, 2021
The report offers specific insights into the performance of major Internet Carriers for the month of February, 2021.
Tier 1 Carriers Performance Report: January, 2021
The report offers specific insights into the performance of major Internet Carriers for the month of January, 2021.
Tier 1 Carriers Performance Report: December, 2020
The report offers specific insights into the performance of major Internet Carriers for the month of December, 2020.
2020: Year in Review
As 2021 approaches, we thought it's a good time to look back at all the important milestones we've achieved in 2020. Moreover, we wanted...
Tier 1 Carriers Performance Report: November, 2020
The report offers specific insights into the performance of major Internet Carriers for the month of November, 2020.
The dark side of BGP community attributes
A while ago, RIPE Labs published the two-part article BGP Communities - A Weapon for the Internet. That may have been a bit of...
Tier 1 Carriers Performance Report: October, 2020
The report offers specific insights into the performance of major Internet Carriers for the month of October, 2020.
Introducing NFA Custom Groups
Network professionals count on NFA when monitoring and analyzing traffic, controlling bandwidth utilization, gaining insights into potential security issues, and reviewing BGP peering relationships....
Getting Started With Noction Flow Analyzer
Noction Flow Analyzer is a flow-based monitoring and reporting software tool that collects, stores, and presents traffic data across an entire network. NFA enables...
Tier 1 Carriers Performance Report: September, 2020
The report offers specific insights into the performance of major Internet Carriers for the month of September, 2020.
Tier 1 Carriers Performance Report: August, 2020
The report offers specific insights into the performance of major Internet Carriers for the month of August, 2020.
Cisco Catalyst 9200 / 9300 / 9400 / 9500 NetFlow Configuration
NetFlow is a great way to gather traffic statistics from your network. With Noction Flow Analyzer, you can view all your NetFlow data in...
Tier 1 Carriers Performance Report: July, 2020
The report offers specific insights into the performance of major Internet Carriers for the month of July, 2020.
The Evolution of Network Flow Monitoring, from NetFlow to IPFIX
Network flow monitoring is an essential tool for a lot of network administrators. Flow monitoring allows you to collect and record all IP traffic...
Tier 1 Carriers Performance Report: June, 2020
The report offers specific insights into the performance of major Internet Carriers for the month of June, 2020.
Tier 1 Carriers Performance Report: May, 2020
The report offers specific insights into the performance of major Internet Carriers for the month of May, 2020.
BGP peer groups, dynamic update peer groups and BGP templates
As a router gains more and more BGP neighbors, two issues arise. The first one is that with
many neighbors, whenever the router needs to...
Tier 1 Carriers Performance Report: April, 2020
The report offers specific insights into the performance of major Internet Carriers for the month of April, 2020.
Updated: The Internet Backbone Networks Performance during the COVID-19 pandemic
Update: Tier 1 carriers performance March 3rd - April 6th
Update: Noction Intelligent Routing Platform performance results
This is yet another COVID-19 related blog post. We...
Tier 1 Carriers Performance Report: March, 2020
The report offers specific insights into the performance of major Internet Carriers for the month of March, 2020.
BGP errors, BGP error codes, and BGP error handling
In this blog post we’ll be looking at BGP errors. For that, our first question should be: is there an error, or is everything...
BGP – the right tool for so many jobs
Like other very successful protocols such as HTTP and DNS, over the years BGP has been given more and more additional jobs to do....
BGP security: an overview of the RPKI framework
The Resource Public Key Infrastructure (RPKI) system is a way to couple an IP address range to an autonomous system number through cryptographic signatures,...
Tier 1 Carriers Performance Report: February, 2020
The report offers specific insights into the performance of major Internet Carriers for the month of February, 2020.
AS path prepending, AS path lengths and the AS path filtering
Previously, we’ve already looked at traffic engineering in general and AS path prepending in particular. Traffic engineering is distributing the traffic load over available...
Tier 1 Carriers Performance Report: January, 2020
The report offers specific insights into the performance of major Internet Carriers for the month of January, 2020.
Tier 1 Carriers Performance Report: December, 2019
The report offers specific insights into the performance of major Internet Carriers for the month of December, 2019.
Tier 1 Carriers Performance Report: November, 2019
The report offers specific insights into the performance of major Internet Carriers for the month of November, 2019.
The IPv4 party is over
On the 25th of November 2019, RIPE NCC made the final /22 IPv4 allocation from the last remaining addresses in the available pool and...
Tier 1 Carriers Performance Report: October, 2019
The report offers specific insights into the performance of major Internet Carriers for the month of October, 2019.
So, what exactly is NFA?
When you’re managing a network, there’s so much to think about — from monitoring bandwidth, discovering traffic patterns to performing threat analysis and providing...
Usage-based billing with NetFlow and sFlow
Usage-based billing enables customers to pay only for data that they have used. In order to charge customers based on data usage, a company...
Tier 1 Carriers Performance Report: September, 2019
The report offers specific insights into the performance of major Internet Carriers for the month of September, 2019.
Insider Threat Detection with NetFlow
When it comes to major security concerns, one of the most serious ones are the data breaches and security exploits caused by insider incidents....
Multicast Traffic Monitoring and NetFlow
With the increasing popularity of multicast media applications, the monitoring of multicast traffic becomes more and more important. When it comes to NetFlow, it...
Tier 1 Carriers Performance Report: August, 2019
The report offers specific insights into the performance of major Internet Carriers for the month of August, 2019.
One Way Delay Measurements and NetFlow
Role of RTT and OWD for TCP
RTT stands for Round Trip Time and it is a length of time that a packet takes from...
DDoS Mitigation and BGP Flowspec
In traditional methods for DDoS mitigation, such as RTBH (remotely triggered blackhole), a BGP route is injected, advertising the IP address of the server...
Tier 1 Carriers Performance Report: July, 2019
The report offers specific insights into the performance of major Internet Carriers for the month of July, 2019.
Tier 1 Carriers Performance Report: June, 2019
The report offers specific insights into the performance of major Internet Carriers for the month of June, 2019.
Questions to ask a NetFlow Vendor Before you Buy
Network visibility is crucial because we cannot manage and secure what we cannot see. NetFlow plays a critical role in traffic visibility by helping...
Tier 1 Carriers Performance Report: May, 2019
The report offers specific insights into the performance of major Internet Carriers for the month of May, 2019.
NetFlow and BGP
Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is a core routing protocol used by most of the Internet Service Providers (ISPs). BGP’s role is to exchange routing...
Network Traffic Analysis and Alerting based on NetFlow
This article gives some insights on how to set up a network traffic analysis and alerting system based on NetFlow. NetFlow is an advanced...
SD-WAN and NetFlow
Software-Defined Networking (SDN) in a Wide Area Network (WAN) - SD-WAN is a technology that simplifies management of WAN by decoupling control plane from...
Tier 1 Carriers Performance Report: April, 2019
The report offers specific insights into the performance of major Internet Carriers for the month of April, 2019.
The 768k or Another Internet Doomsday? Here’s how to deal with the TCAM overflow at the 768k boundary.
On August 8th, 2014 some ISPs experienced a phenomenon called the “512k Day”. The global BGP routing table, which consists of the global Internet...
Identifying, monitoring and securing BYOD traffic with NetFlow
Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) is a practice that allows users to bring their personal devices such as tablets or smartphones to the workplace...
Tier 1 Carriers Performance Report: March, 2019
The report offers specific insights into the performance of major Internet Carriers for the month of March, 2019.
Finding MAC addresses using Flexible NetFlow
So far, we have discussed NetFlow configuration for network devices from various vendors such as Cisco, Juniper, Huawei, VyOS. We have collected layer 3...
Web Applications compromise detection using Flow Data
Our previous article discusses flow-based SSH compromise detection. A force attack against SSH hosts consists of scan, brute-force and compromise phases that can be...
SSH Compromise Detection Using Flow Data
Secure Shell (SSH) provides a secure channel over an unsecured network in a client-server model. SSH is typically used to log into a remote...
Tier 1 Carriers Performance Report: February, 2019
The report offers specific insights into the performance of major Internet Carriers for the month of February, 2019.
DNS Amplification Attacks Detection with NetFlow or sFlow
The Internet we know nowadays cannot properly operate without using the Domain Name System (DNS). DNS syncs up domain names with IP addresses so...
The Difference between SNMP and NetFlow. Why should I use both?
Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) is a well-known standardized application layer protocol, originally developed for network management but mostly used for network monitoring. SNMP...
Tier 1 Carriers Performance Report: January, 2019
The report offers specific insights into the performance of major Internet Carriers for the month of January, 2019.
Automatic versus Manual NetFlow Deduplication
Duplication of NetFlow occurs when the NetFlow records about the same flow are exported multiple times to a NetFlow collector. In turn, the volume...
Exporting Flow to multiple servers (Flow Samplicators)
In our previous article we have discussed the alternative way to get flow statistics using a NetFlow generator. One of the fundamental features of...
NetFlow Generators explained
What is a NetFlow Generator?
A NetFlow generator is a dedicated network appliance or software running on a PC and listening on a single or...
Tier 1 Carriers Performance Report: December, 2018
The report offers specific insights into the performance of major Internet Carriers for the month of December, 2018.
Configuring NetFlow on VyOS and Huawei Network Devices
This is the second part of the post dedicated to NetFlow configuration. In the first part, we’ve discussed the configuration of Flexible NetFlow on...
Configuring Cisco Flexible NetFlow and Juniper j-Flow v8
One of our recent blog posts dedicated to NetFlow technology provides the necessary knowledge needed to understand NetFlow principles and what it is used...
Tier 1 Carriers Performance Report: November, 2018
The report offers specific insights into the performance of major Internet Carriers for the month of November, 2018.
The accuracy and overhead of flow sampling. To use or not to use flow sampling?
Flow-based (NetFlow, IPFIX, NetStream) and packet-based (sFlow) network monitoring technologies enable network administrators to gain insight into traffic traversing a network. They provide various...
NetFlow vs. sFlow vs. IPFIX vs. NetStream. Network Traffic Analysis and Network Traffic Monitoring.
Network monitoring is a systematic effort to monitor parameters of a computer network in order to detect issues that degrade network performance. Network Traffic...
Tier 1 Carriers Performance Report: October, 2018
The report offers specific insights into the performance of major Internet Carriers for the month of October, 2018.
Quantum Computing and the Future of Networking
Nowadays, the very abstract ideas underlying the quantum physics are being translated into reality thanks to new technological capabilities in the field of nanotechnology...
BGP Labeled Unicast (BGP-LU)
This blog post discusses BGP Labeled Unicast (BGP-LU) which is used in multi-regional networks to carry the label information. While the RFC3107 “Carrying Label...
Recursive Lookup in BGP
The aim of this article is to discuss the importance of Recursive Lookup in BGP. First of all we need to understand the purpose...
Tier 1 Carriers Performance Report: September, 2018
The report offers specific insights into the performance of major Internet Carriers for the month of September, 2018.
Accumulated IGP and BGP
RFC 7311 defines an optional non-transitive BGP attribute called the Accumulated IGP Metric Attribute (AIGP).
As we know, IGP stands for Interior Gateway Protocol...
QoS Policy and its propagation via BGP (QPPB)
Quality of Service (QoS) refers to a collection of technologies that networking devices use to apply different treatment to packets as they pass through...
Tier 1 Carriers Performance Report: August, 2018
The report offers specific insights into the performance of major Internet Carriers for the month of August, 2018.
Tier 1 Carriers Performance Report: July, 2018
The report offers specific insights into the performance of major Internet Carriers for the month of July, 2018.
BGP Conditional Route Injection
We have recently posted the BGP Route Aggregation eBook that discusses the benefits of route aggregation and explains the various optional parameters associated with...
BGP Route Dampening: obsolete or still used in the industry?
The unstable route whose availability alters repeatedly is called a flap. When flaps occur, an excessive number of BGP UPDATE messages are sent to...
BGP Attribute Filtering and Error Handling
The BGP Attribute Filter feature enables BGP speakers to take a certain action based on the presence of a specified path attribute inside the...
BGP Optimal Route Reflection as an alternative to BGP Add Path
Full iBGP Mesh and Route Reflection
To avoid loops in a Full iBGP Mesh, BGP routers are only allowed to learn prefixes over iBGP from...
Tier 1 Carriers Performance Report: June, 2018
The report offers specific insights into the performance of major Internet Carriers for the month of June, 2018.
Network Address Translation (NAT) and BGP Explained
Network Address Translation (NAT) was originally described in RFC 1631. Although initially presented as a short term solution for preventing the IPv4 addresses depletion,...
Tier 1 Carriers Performance Report: May, 2018
The report offers specific insights into the performance of major Internet Carriers for the month of May, 2018.
Advertising Multiple Paths in BGP (BGP-Addpath)
The BGP advertisement of a prefix with new attributes replaces the previous announcement of that prefix. This behavior is known as an Implicit Withdraw,...
BGP and Traffic Engineering Mechanisms for WISPs
In this blog post, we will take a look at Kevin Myers's presentation where he discusses deployment of both OSPF and BGP routing protocols...
Tier 1 Carriers Performance Report: April, 2018
The report offers specific insights into the performance of major Internet Carriers for the month of April, 2018.
BGP Hijacking overview. Routing incidents prevention and defense mechanisms. (Updated)
What is BGP Hijacking?
BGP hijacking is an illicit process of taking control of a group of IP prefixes assigned to a potential victim. Either...
Bit Indexed Explicit Replication and the BGP Extensions for BIER
In this article we’ll take a look at the architecture for multicast forwarding called the Bit Indexed Explicit Replication or simply BIER. However, we’ll...
Tier 1 Carriers Performance Report: March, 2018
The report offers specific insights into the performance of major Internet Carriers for the month of March, 2018.
DDoS Amplification Attacks
A distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack is an attack in which the multiple compromised devices attack a target and cause the denial of service for...
BGP/MPLS Layer 3 VPNs Practical Configuration
In our previous blog article we’ve discussed the benefits and the fundamental principles of BGP/MPLS L3 VPNs. We have covered the definition of the...
Tier 1 carrier performance report: February, 2018
The report is presented in a slightly different form from the previous ones. Besides the general analysis we have complemented it with data reflecting...
BGP / MPLS Layer 3 VPNs
What is VPN?
Virtual Private Networks (VPN) are designed to provide users with the private networks capabilities over a shared infrastructure. They connect remote sites...
Segment Routing and the SRv6 Network Programming
IPv6 Addressing
The Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) adoption is growing at pace. According to Google statistics, 22% of the users reach Google over IPv6...
Tier 1 carrier performance report: January, 2018
The report covers broadly used Tier 1 carriers performance results in the US and the general spread for the month of January 2018. For...
TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) Congestion Control
Network congestion may occur when a sender overflows the network with too many packets. At the time of congestion, the network cannot handle this...
Intent-based Networking explained
The Intent-based Networking (IBN) concept is actively being discussed by IT professionals over the last few months. It represents a new approach to networking,...
Tier 1 carrier performance report: December, 2017
The presented analysis is based on more than 900 million successful probes that span the entire month. All data is aggregated per carrier on...
The variability of Internet Traffic
Internet traffic has a wide range of variability at all times. However, the fourth quarter of the year typically remains the busiest for a...
Networking and the White Box Solutions
The recently published AT&T white paper "Towards an Open, Disaggregated Network Operating System" shows the company’s willingness to discuss and actively promote the creation...
Tier 1 carrier performance report: November, 2017
Disclaimer*:
The data presented in this report card is intended for information purposes only and is not to be interpreted as any form of promotion...
Internet of Things and BGP
The Internet of Things (IoT) attracts huge public attention nowadays. It is a network of interconnected physical devices (things) which sense and interact with...
Tier 1 carrier performance report: October, 2017
Disclaimer*:
The data presented in this report card is intended for information purposes only and is not to be interpreted as any form of promotion...
BGP and Cryptocurrencies
What is Cryptocurrency?
Cryptocurrency is a digital asset that works as a medium of exchange. It uses cryptography to secure transactions and to control the...
IPv10 – a Joke or a Serious RFC Draft?
Recently, a new Internet draft - Internet Protocol Version 10 (IPv10) attracted attention of network enthusiasts. People on the Internet forums often ask if...
Tier 1 carrier performance report: September, 2017
Disclaimer*:
The data presented in this report card is intended for information purposes only and is not to be interpreted as any form of promotion...
BGP in Large-Scale Data Centers
Large-scale data centers (DCs) connect hundreds of thousands or even more servers, having millions of users. Generally, every DC runs two kinds of applications....
Tier 1 carrier performance report: August, 2017
The current report covers widely used Tier 1 carriers performance results in the US for the month of August 2017. Rare datapoints from distant...
BGP LLDP Peer Discovery
Just like with the other routing protocols such as OSPF or EIGRP, BGP speaking routers first need to become neighbors prior to exchanging routing...
Tier 1 carrier performance report: July, 2017
The current report covers widely used Tier 1 carriers performance results in the US for the month of July 2017. Rare datapoints from distant...
BGP Monitoring Protocol and the BMP collectors implementation open-source project
BGP Monitoring Protocol (BMP) is a protocol used for monitoring BGP sessions. It is defined in RFC 7854. Prior to BMP, network operators used...
Tier 1 carrier performance: June, 2017 snapshot
This analysis covers widely used Tier 1 carriers performance results in the US for the month of June 2017. Rare datapoints from distant locations...
BGP Session Culling
This article discusses BGP session culling techniques that mitigate a negative impact of maintenance of Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) on IP networks. IXP represents...
Tier 1 carrier performance: May, 2017 report
This analysis covers widely used Tier 1 carriers performance results in the US for the month of May 2017. Rare datapoints from distant locations...
BGP over GRE Tunnel
In this blog post we are going to explain how Generic Routing Encapsulation (GRE) tunnel might be used in a situation when the Border...
Tier 1 carrier performance: April, 2017 snapshot
This analysis covers widely used Tier 1 carriers performance results in the US for the month of April 2017. Rare datapoints from distant locations...
Tier 1 carrier performance: March, 2017 snapshot
This analysis covers widely used Tier 1 carriers performance results in the US for the month of March 2017. A new carrier, Hurricane Electric,...
What BGP Looking Glass servers are and how network administrators use them.
Whether you are an experienced network administrator or you have just started to learn Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), Looking Glass (LG) is definitely a...
Noction IRP web hooks support for Slack API
Slack is a great communication platform that simplifies and streamlines day-to-day operations of various teams around the world.
Integrating the tools that engineers adopt in...
Tier 1 carrier performance: February, 2017 snapshot
This analysis covers widely used Tier 1 carriers performance results in the US for the month of February 2017. Infrequent datapoints such as data...
Tier 1 carrier performance: January, 2017 snapshot
The analysis covers Tier 1 carriers widely used by US networks. Datapoints that appear rarely, such as data from Alaska, or a single use...
PeeringDB & Internet Exchange peering Part 3: generating router configurations
In the previous two posts we wrote about using PeeringDB to find information about potential peers and obtain the peering details using the REST...
Tier 1 carrier performance report card for the month of December, 2016
As Noction continues to intelligently optimize routing for more and more networks around the world, we find ourselves in the unique position of having...
Using PeeringDB to set up your internet exchange peering – Part 2
In our previous post, we wrote about using PeeringDB to find information about potential peers, and then after peering has been arranged, using PeeringDB...
Weekly Snapshot of Tier 1 carrier performance
At Noction, collecting and analyzing petabytes of data across all IRP instances worldwide offers us valuable data regarding overall Internet performance as well as...
Using PeeringDB to set up your internet exchange peering – Part 1
When networks exchange traffic without having a customer-provider relationship, this is called peering. We've talked about peering in previous Noction blog posts, such as...
Using communities to filter BGP announcements
When first starting out with BGP, the typical way to advertise a network's prefixes is using the network statement with a prefix filter and...
Noction bets on BGP FlowSpec
While networks are agnostic to the content of the serviced packets, end users have a very good understanding of what traffic they have and...
Unwanted traffic over backup links
In most cases, when you have multiple connections to multiple ISPs, you want to use both links side-by-side, with each handling a certain fraction...
BGP and asymmetric routing
What is Asymmetric Routing?
Asymmetric routing is the situation where packets from A to B follow a different path than packets from B to A....
Migrating to BGP
Here on the Noction blog we've covered many aspects of using BGP to connect your network to the internet. However, often implementing BGP isn't...
Using MEDs to optimize internet exchange paths
Last year, we discussed the MED attribute and how it can be useful along the local preference and the AS path as a tool...
BGP and equal-cost multipath (ECMP)
One given in the network world is that bandwidth will increase. So that Gigabit Ethernet link that provided bandwidth to spare a year ago...
BGP path hunting
Before we look at BGP path hunting, let's first discuss the RIP count to infinity problem. RIP, the Routing Information Protocol, is pretty much...
Resetting BGP sessions
It's been a while since we talked about filtering BGP updates. BGP routers need to be configured with the right filters so packets don't...
BGP’s hold and keepalive timers, detecting dead neighbors and BFD
When the BGP session between two routers is established, the two routers exchange prefixes and then start sending traffic for those prefixes to the...
Where do networks interconnect?
As end-users, we expect to connect to an Internet Service Provider which will take our packets and deliver them to all destinations around the...
Debugging BGP states
Border Gateway Protocol is unique among routing protocols because it requires a number of parameters to be configured manually on each side before two...
Lesser-known BGP path attributes
The past few weeks we've discussed the main BGP path attributes: the next hop, the AS path, the MED. We also covered the community...
The BGP Multi Exit Discriminator (MED) attribute and tie-breaking
When BGP needs to choose which route to reach a certain destination is best, it first looks at the local preference and AS path...
Understanding the AS path and AS path prepending
In earlier articles, we discussed the next hop and local preference attributes. Today we'll be looking at the AS_PATH attribute as well as the...
What you should know about BGP’s LOCAL_PREF
In the previous blog post, we looked at the BGP NEXT_HOP attribute. Today we'll cover another attribute: the LOCAL_PREF or local preference.
What is LOCAL_PREF?
The...
A fresh look at BGP’s NEXT_HOP
Once a BGP session is established, routers will exchange two types of messages: KEEPALIVE and UPDATE. Keepalive messages are sent to let a neighboring...
Optimizing network performance for online gaming
In many online games, very good network performance is a prerequisite for satisfactory gameplay. However, there are many kinds of games, and their networking...
Network latency and its effect on application performance
We've talked about network latency several times in previous blog posts. Today, let's drill a bit deeper on that topic, and especially how it...
Optimizing network performance for video streaming
Video is an interesting network application. Many users consume hours of video per day, and an hour of HD video is easily more than...
Efficient and effective probing of Internet subnetworks
When flying, it's important to choose the right airline. Obviously, a direct connection is usually best, but if a layover is necessary, it helps...
Peace of mind during provider maintenance downtime
The network that never needs any maintenance, along with the associated downtime, hasn't been built yet. You can plan your own downtime such that...
BGP security: the BGPsec protocol
In our last post, we took a look at RPKI. With RPKI, it's possible to reject prefixes that are originated by the wrong AS,...
BGP security: announcing prefixes without authorization
In our last post, we looked at protecting the TCP session that carries BGP information between two routers, mainly against spoofed TCP resets. However,...
BGP Security: the MD5 password and GTSM
Back in the late 1980s and the early 1990s when BGP was developed, security was still an afterthought for protocols used on the internet....
Do route optimizers cause fake routes?
Yesterday, an incident occurred where an Autonomous System (AS) advertised more than 7,000 prefixes that belong to other networks. These are "more specific" prefixes—subsets...
What should your peering policy look like?
As discussed in earlier posts, as networks grow larger it starts making sense to exchange traffic with other networks directly (peering) rather than pay...
IPv4 BGP vs IPv6 BGP
BGP is older than IPv6. Even BGP-4, the version we still use today, predates IPv6: the first BGP-4 RFC (RFC 1654) was published in...
Fixing packet loss: spending money to make money
As explained in our last blog post, packet loss and latency can seriously impact application performance. There's not much we can do about latency,...
Network latency and packet loss effects on performance
The triumvirate of network performance metrics are latency, loss and jitter. Today, we're going to take a look at how each of them —...
The top 4 causes of network downtime
Business people often believe that in order to have a reliable system, you need reliable components. Using reliable components to build your network certainly...
BGP and OSPF. How do they interact.
In some ways, BGP is nice and simple. For instance, there's only one BGP: BGP version 4. Many network professionals have been asking the...
Peering Request Etiquette
At home, we pay an ISP to transport our packets to and from the rest of the world. Most organizations do the same. But...
Understanding BGP Communities
After reading the title of this article you may be thinking of small neighborhoods in the world's most-connected cities where BGP-minded people live together,...
Filtering your BGP updates
One thing we all learn quickly after getting started with BGP is that if left to its own devices, the protocol will happily propagate...
Why BGP is not enough?
It’s common knowledge that Border Gateway Protocol has no ability to make performance-based routing decisions and often routes traffic through paths that are congested...
SNMP Traps explained
SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) is a standard protocol that network devices use to control each other and report critical information. The main advantage...
Deploying Noction IRP across Multiple Routing Domains
There are several route optimization techniques applied to networks distinguished by a single routing domain. The traditional approach requires network engineers to apply various...
Monitoring Intelligent Routing Platform performance with Overview Reports
Our customers ask repeatedly about the benefits IRP brings to their infrastructure. To address some of these questions we've compiled a few Overview Reports...
Configuring Internet Exchanges in Noction IRP 2.1
Conventional wisdom leads us to believe that interconnects between peering partners in an Exchange that is shorter will also be better than traditional links...
Route Reflectors – an alternative to full-mesh iBGP configuration
The typical fully-meshed iBGP configuration of routers can become very difficult to manage in large networks. Because of the increasing numbers of iBGP sessions...
Routing optimization for Internet Exchange traffic
There are various techniques for optimizing traffic routing across multiple transit providers available in a network. However, there are some additional challenges when there...
Routing anomalies – their origins and how do they affect end users
Nowadays, the Internet is made-up of more than 45,000 active Autonomous Systems (ASes), each with a different complexity level and specific configurations. To accomplish...
BGP-based inter-domain traffic engineering: important considerations
Inter-domain traffic engineering aims to optimize traffic performance, originating and terminating in different administrative domains. At the moment, Autonomous Systems exchange traffic via exterior...
Delivering on SLA promises with Intelligent Routing
Service Provider's customers want to know the time frames they can expect a response and resolution from the provider when they submit a request...
Deploying BGP for redundant IP connectivity
All organizations that depend on Internet for sales revenue or business continuity require internet redundancy. Downtime lowers productivity, yields losses and painfully affects the...
How does BGP select the best routing path
BGP is a protocol which performs routing information exchange among routers to determine the optimal paths for the traffic flow. A BGP router forms...
Five tips for reducing congestion in enterprise networks
It’s a commonly known fact that congestion on the road significantly increases the time the auto vehicles must spend to get to the destination....
The cost of network downtime for Service Providers
An operational network is a strategic business resource. It carries everyday messages and mission-critical data, and facilitates communication between people and business processes. It...
Understanding the impact of network latency on Service Providers’ business
Speed is highly prioritized in networking. Applications with high bandwidth consumption and mission-critical systems demand ever more throughput and capacity. While the main demand...
Economical implications of WAN BGP optimization automation
Most multi-homed networks need to engineer and control the traffic flow for both performance and economical reasons. This is commonly done by manually tweaking...
Is BGP multi-homing enough for WAN network performance?
BGP multihoming has become as necessary to the networks connected to Internet, as the use of redundant power sources or multiple data centers. No...
Network congestion technical implications
During the transfer of information in the Internet, there are various situations related to certain host or network inaccessibility, or channels of communication overload....