Benjamin Smith <lists at benjamindsmith.com> wrote: > I've been exploring high-uptime availability solutions for > our own, database-driven ASP. We have two sites, much as > original poster describes, and 5-minute DNS, but many larger > providers (EG: SBC, AOL) have DNS servers that seem to ignore > TTL. Apparently many others here serve content to users on networks other than those on AOL, SBC, etc... Or at least their comments seem to repeat that. ;-> It's gotta be either that, or it's the reality that they keep testing when their servers are using DNS that talk directly to (or are the) authority for the domain. I suspect the latter. ;-> > So, I've been at a quandary on this very same issue. We had > a problem about 2 years ago where we had to switch to the > failover in an emergency. From our end, we were "back up" in > < 3 hours, (far less than the 6 hours allowed by contract) but > it took over 48 hours for availability to approach 100%, due to > the aforementioned DNS issues. (I hate you, SBC!) Which is why you need 1-to-1 NAT for near-immediate uptime. Of course, that doesn't help you if the provider of those IPs can't reach your 1-to-1 NAT equipment. That's why it's not a true failover. An ideal, although bandwidth using, solution is to keep your router/1-to-1 NAT equipment at different locations. E.g., you have 4 sites -- 2 router/NAT, 2 servers. Only if and when you lost 3 sites would you go down. But that gets mighty expensive. Which brings us to the next concept ... > So, do you know of a "getting started" for how to get an > autonomous system number and run BGP? My skills as a network > admin are a distant second to my primary skills... In the US, start with the authority, ARIN -- http://www.arin.net/ They will give you the "do it yourself" cost. I suspect you're below that, so you need to talk to your provider(s) about a solution. Unless you have just 1 provider (which means you're putting all your eggs in their backbone basket), it's pretty tough to do without ARIN at some point. That's why it's typically better to rely on a partner who already has their own AS, and ties into 3+ providers. Again, this isn't something that you can do on your own, unless you have a lot of dough. Again, this is where the small-to-medium ASP finds him/herself at the point where they either have to make a major investment to go bigger, partner to go bigger (although they will always be smaller than the partner), etc... It is *NEVER* something you can do in software, and that's the chronically dead wrong assumption. -- Bryan J. Smith Professional, Technical Annoyance b.j.smith at ieee.org http://thebs413.blogspot.com ---------------------------------------------------- *** Speed doesn't kill, difference in speed does ***