Cisco PfR - Use with Clients on the Internet

kfarrington · ‎08-05-2009

Hi Guys,

If I have clients on the Internet and I want to use PfR to select the best path to my clients via two ISPs, is this possible, or is PfR only an "internal wan" corporateHQ-branch office offering?

Thx

Ken

Istvan_Rabai · ‎08-05-2009

It is possible.

Here's the config guide for you if needed:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/ios/oer/configuration/guide/12_4t/oer_12_4t_book.html

Cheers:

Istvan

Joseph W. Doherty · ‎08-05-2009

No, it's not "internal WAN" only (in fact the prior OER was designed more for Internet in mind), but there are gotchas for using it to obtain "best path" for your clients. That's not to imply it's not useful, quite the opposite, but to just obtain "best path" per client isn't trival.

kfarrington · ‎08-05-2009

Hi There,

Many thx to all for the replies. I am a newby at this. The way I see it, is you have the MC and BR. If you wanted to obtain best path for clients, would you not have to have some sort of peering agreement, or conversation with them so that you could probe them?

Thoughts?

Many thx

Ken

Joseph W. Doherty · ‎08-05-2009

Having agreement with clients to allow/permit/expect active probing, is one of the gotchas I had in mind. Since we're talking about the Internet, how many clients might there be? . . . (Might be practical if you were only going to do active probing for a couple of clients.)

BTW, PfR can also accomplish much even without active probing. (It also, I've found, seems to scale better.)