The Scary World Beyond the Network Edge

There’s an old Gahan Wilson cartoon in which a car is stopped on a road that has suddenly ended at the edge of a cliff stretching out to the horizon. Two guys are out of the car, one on his hands and knees peering over the edge. The other, holding a map, says, “That’s funny, the map ends here too.”

You should look at the edge of your administrative domain as the edge of a cliff, an unsafe and scary place for any of the nice things happily running in your network.

How do you define the edge of your administrative domain? It’s not always as clear-cut as an autonomous system edge. Here’s a simple guideline to follow: If the router you are connecting to is not under your control, it is not in your administrative domain and therefore IS NOT TO BE TRUSTED.

Read more from Jeff Doyle here.