Route control picks most effective ISP

Today, organizations are looking to run Internet-based applications for supply-chain management, e-commerce, financial transactions and interactive communications such as voice over IP and video conferencing. Running these key business functions over the Internet requires predictable and reliable performance at minimum cost.

Unfortunately, the Internet was not designed for performance, and Internet connectivity costs vary widely. The nature of the peering relationships among ISPs and the main Internet routing protocol, Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), are at the core of these challenges.

Route control is a new category of products and services that addresses these fundamental Internet performance and cost barriers for organizations that have multiple ISP connections. Route control requires the addition of a route control device, or platform, running route control software, alongside the organization's Internet-facing routers, plus the installation of management software.

Getting started with route control products is fairly straightforward. It typically involves a hardware device installed on premises and, in some cases, a dedicated connection to the vendor's network operations center to send and receive Internet performance data.

The device usually sits out of the flow of data, peering with the edge routers using standard BGP. Once the hardware is installed, the company sets preferences for cost and performance. The route control product then can optimize the company's ISP connectivity. Reporting lets the organization tweak its preferences to obtain the ideal blend of cost and performance.

Stand-alone route control products have no additional requirements beyond this hardware and software; service-based offerings also require an external source to provide the on-site device with Internet performance information.

Route control products move routing decisions back to the organization accessing the Internet with multiple links. As a result, network managers can ensure traffic flows over the optimum ISP link automatically in real time.

Using route control, organizations can route outbound Internet traffic to the ISP link that best serves each of their end users and partner sites. The result is better performance for business-critical applications and transactions. Route control works for all types of traffic, from regular static Web content to dynamic Internet applications. Route control optimizes an organization's Internet routing using a four-step process:

1. Measurement: measures the real-time performance of each available ISP link to end users. The end-user measurement process should be passive (no annoying pings) and use minimal network overhead. Measurement should include all possible ISP choices for reaching the end user, not just the current routing choice.

2. Analysis and decision making: uses the performance metrics and cost-based ISP preferences to determine the best ISP link in real time. The organization's cost per megabit or minimum bandwidth commitments for each ISP link could be part of the decision-making process.

3. Automatic route updates: updates the organization's edge routers as conditions on the Internet change. Communication with these routers relies on the standard BGP but has no impact on BGP routing elsewhere in the Internet.

4. Reporting: reports on ISP performance and the route optimization process. The reports can be used to measure ISP performance from the company's premises to its end users. Tailored reports might illustrate on-net performance per ISP and be used for service-level agreement enforcement.

Based on results from a variety of sources, it is known that BGP chooses a suboptimal path 50% to 80% of the time. Internet route control products can make these routes up to two times faster on average, with peak improvements up to 10 times faster for the most poorly served routes. Given results like these, route control should be the foundation for an organization's Internet optimization efforts.

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Lloyd is CTO at RouteScience Technologies. He can be reached at mlloyd@routescience.com.