4 ms·

You write down that you have no router, though your primary US location is connected to a "quintuple-homed network" and all global locations are at least triple

You write down that you have no router, though your primary US location is connected to a "quintuple-homed network" and all global locations are at least triple-homed. What does that mean exactly? Is your IP provider quintuple-homed? Or are you running a bit more complicated setup than you explain but the gist is that you have no particular routing mechanisms? What does that say regarding your high availability? If one of your location is down, then it's definitely down until being fixed? Anyway, that was interesting, just curious about the fact of having no router at all. Thanks!

rsync 6y ago
The primary US location, in San Diego[1], gives us a managed, blended bandwidth product which is, in fact, quintuple homed and has been since we moved in (2001). So we have a dumb switch in our rack, but they have routers. In 2021 that's a weird bandwidth product and a weird setup but in 2001 it was "normal" and we just stay with that setup out of inertia (and the fact that we can't connect to he.net in San Diego). A similar setup exists for us in Zurich with init7. However, you are correct and we need to edit that FAQ language: our geo-redundant site in Fremont does not work that way. (I will note that it has been 11 years since we put that location in place (he.net in Fremont) and it has zero minutes of downtime) A tremendous amount of complexity and attack surface are eschewed by living with that setup and we're always looking for new ways to make that tradeoff. [1] Castle Acess datacenter on Aero drive. Is now a KIO managed datacenter.
- bombcar 6y ago
  Good old Castle Access - and they really seem to take the “Castle” part pretty seriously. We were there at a similar time - I probably saw the rsync.net servers.
walrus01 6y ago
I read it not as there are no routers anywhere, but that they've abstracted the problem of running the routers to their upstream hosting/colo/datacenter provider. Obviously there are routers and their systems are connected to somebody's ASN, or you wouldn't be able to reach them over the Internet.

rsync 6y ago

The primary US location, in San Diego[1], gives us a managed, blended bandwidth product which is, in fact, quintuple homed and has been since we moved in (2001). So we have a dumb switch in our rack, but they have routers. In 2021 that's a weird bandwidth product and a weird setup but in 2001 it was "normal" and we just stay with that setup out of inertia (and the fact that we can't connect to he.net in San Diego). A similar setup exists for us in Zurich with init7. However, you are correct and we need to edit that FAQ language: our geo-redundant site in Fremont does not work that way. (I will note that it has been 11 years since we put that location in place (he.net in Fremont) and it has zero minutes of downtime) A tremendous amount of complexity and attack surface are eschewed by living with that setup and we're always looking for new ways to make that tradeoff. [1] Castle Acess datacenter on Aero drive. Is now a KIO managed datacenter.

bombcar 6y ago
Good old Castle Access - and they really seem to take the “Castle” part pretty seriously. We were there at a similar time - I probably saw the rsync.net servers.

walrus01 6y ago

I read it not as there are no routers anywhere, but that they've abstracted the problem of running the routers to their upstream hosting/colo/datacenter provider. Obviously there are routers and their systems are connected to somebody's ASN, or you wouldn't be able to reach them over the Internet.