3 ms·

As of a few years ago Linode got transit from the facilities they are in and almost all of them had RTBH set up with a capacity of 5 or 10 routes. It would be i

As of a few years ago Linode got transit from the facilities they are in and almost all of them had RTBH set up with a capacity of 5 or 10 routes. It would be incredibly foolish to operate a hosting provider without it.

scurvy 11y ago
Wait, you're saying that Linode uses facility transit? Like, they buy bandwidth from Savvis and TelX? Well that would be the problem right there. From what I can tell, Linode doesn't even have their own AS for customer traffic? It appears that they have an AS for some internal use, but not for customers?
- X-Istence 11y ago
  Just because they purchase transit doesn't mean they don't have their own AS. Everyone has to purchase transit at some point. Transit != AS.
  - scurvy 11y ago
    Where did I say that purchasing transit relates to an AS? I was speaking out them separately. "House bandwidth" in most colos is pretty garbage, and you don't have much control over it. I'm a lot less impressed with Linode after this thread than I was before.
- agwa 11y ago
  That's correct. They use facility transit everywhere except their newest datacenters (Singapore and maybe Frankfurt), where they operate their own AS and use blended transit.
- jsmthrowaway 11y ago
  I don't know if I'd outright call it a problem, per se, since in a couple facilities (say, Fremont) it's a good thing given how good the provider (say, Hurricane Electric) is at providing transit. So in the datacenters where the provider is better at transit than facilities (say, Fremont), the equation breaks in their favor. When I left they also didn't really have the staff to run a proper NOC for a full-on AS; one extremely talented network engineer who has since left mostly owned all the "running a grown-up network" stuff, like running down an ASN, working RTBH with the facilities, well-designed uplink strategy at Linode's edge, and lobbying for anycast infrastructure for DNS and so on. They had just hired another purebred networking wonk as I moved on who probably owns it now, and likely has help. So punting a lot of the typical NOC work upstream to a facility with whom you're already working anyway made a bit of resource-related sense at the time, since staffing a NOC for a network of that scale is a significant challenge and they like to operate lean. That's changing now (I didn't know this and learned it from agwa's comment), which is probably reflective of growth on the resource front.
  - scurvy 11y ago
    Real talk: it's not that hard to run your own network. It sounds like Linode was skirting by on not making the infrastructure investment both in hardware and people. It's finally come back to bite them. No excuses and no pity for them. Also, I wouldn't run around saying that having HE in house is a great thing.

scurvy 11y ago

Wait, you're saying that Linode uses facility transit? Like, they buy bandwidth from Savvis and TelX? Well that would be the problem right there. From what I can tell, Linode doesn't even have their own AS for customer traffic? It appears that they have an AS for some internal use, but not for customers?

X-Istence 11y ago
Just because they purchase transit doesn't mean they don't have their own AS. Everyone has to purchase transit at some point. Transit != AS.
- scurvy 11y ago
  Where did I say that purchasing transit relates to an AS? I was speaking out them separately. "House bandwidth" in most colos is pretty garbage, and you don't have much control over it. I'm a lot less impressed with Linode after this thread than I was before.
agwa 11y ago
That's correct. They use facility transit everywhere except their newest datacenters (Singapore and maybe Frankfurt), where they operate their own AS and use blended transit.
jsmthrowaway 11y ago
I don't know if I'd outright call it a problem, per se, since in a couple facilities (say, Fremont) it's a good thing given how good the provider (say, Hurricane Electric) is at providing transit. So in the datacenters where the provider is better at transit than facilities (say, Fremont), the equation breaks in their favor. When I left they also didn't really have the staff to run a proper NOC for a full-on AS; one extremely talented network engineer who has since left mostly owned all the "running a grown-up network" stuff, like running down an ASN, working RTBH with the facilities, well-designed uplink strategy at Linode's edge, and lobbying for anycast infrastructure for DNS and so on. They had just hired another purebred networking wonk as I moved on who probably owns it now, and likely has help. So punting a lot of the typical NOC work upstream to a facility with whom you're already working anyway made a bit of resource-related sense at the time, since staffing a NOC for a network of that scale is a significant challenge and they like to operate lean. That's changing now (I didn't know this and learned it from agwa's comment), which is probably reflective of growth on the resource front.
- scurvy 11y ago
  Real talk: it's not that hard to run your own network. It sounds like Linode was skirting by on not making the infrastructure investment both in hardware and people. It's finally come back to bite them. No excuses and no pity for them. Also, I wouldn't run around saying that having HE in house is a great thing.