Trilight Zone

[tricore]

Even relatively simple networks are subject to routing problems, although large and complex ones are more likely to have them. Many of these problems are expressed in terms of BGP (Border Gateway Protocol), the core routing protocol of the Internet. It's BGP that defines what networks yours is connected to, how to find other networks, and how they should connect to each other.

Many of the problems that can develop in the routing system will eventually manifest as user problems, such as disconnections or performance degradation. Good network monitoring combined with analytical capabilities can detect such problems as they are developing, and suggest remediation.

Route flapping is such a problem. Usually caused by configuration errors or intermittently unreliable connection, route flapping describes a router that alternatively advertises one route to a destination and then another. The router may have to recalculate the preferred route to the destination while the data is already in transit to the destination.

Good network monitoring software will monitor BGP activity and provide analytics capabilities to diagnose BGP routing instabilities such as route flapping.

Monitoring can also be useful in forensically analyzing BGP injection attacks, where a network falsely advertises itself in order to spoof a different, well-known network.