Rethinking BGP on the DC Fabric

01/02/2021
Rethinking BGP on the DC Fabric

Listen "Rethinking BGP on the DC Fabric"

Episode Synopsis




Everyone uses BGP for DC underlays now because … well, just because everyone does. After all, there’s an RFC explaining the idea, every tool in the world supports BGP for the underlay, and every vendor out there recommends some form of BGP in their design documents.

I’m going to swim against the current for the moment and spend a couple of weeks here discussing the case against BGP as a DC underlay protocol. I’m not the only one swimming against this particular current, of course—there are at least three proposals in the IETF (more, if you count things that will probably never be deployed) proposing link-state alternatives to BGP. If BGP is so ideal for DC fabric underlays, then why are so many smart people (at least they seem to be smart) working on finding another solution?