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Traffic optimizing products (posted 2002-10-29)

netVmg, a company selling products that optimize traffic flow for organizations with more than one connection to the net, didn't waste any time and announced a "webinar" on October 9th, promising to tell what happened and how to prevent it. I think they mean that if you use their products, your traffic is automatically rerouted around any black holes or congestion in ISP networks. Another company selling similar products, Route Science, had a spokesperson explain that BGP is pretty much brain dead in an Americas Network article.

What those companies conveniently fail to mention is that what their (expensive) products do automatically, can also be done by hand on any BGP router. But I guess as long as they keep the mis-information to a minimum and they don't inject instability into the global routing table by trying to micro-manage inbound traffic flows, their products are harmless and serve a need.

Check out netVmg's newsletter called The Best Path for not-too-technical discussions about the benefits of multihoming with the marketese limited to reasonable levels.