> The admins at this university claim this is by design and for security
reasons.. My response was the entire internet is asymmetrical and
while this may of been a legitimate concern in the 90's, I don't think
its a real concern anymore if things are set up correctly. They
suggested we add static routes to our equipment to address this… This
seems like a bad idea and I am not comfortable adjusting my routing
table to address one site's issues on the internet due to their (not
ours) routing/security policies.
Working in a university environment like you, we do have connectivity to
some of those high-speed R&E networks, and or routing policy generally
prefers to use those paths if they are available, for reasons of
performance (offloading traffic from more traditional transit paths)
and cost/cost avoidance, as others have mentioned. Asymmetric routing is
always a possibility between two multi-homed networks. I still
occasionally have to wrestle with the notion that many people have that
asymmetric routing is bad...
If the organization at the far end is doing stateful firewalling at the
borders of their multi-homed network, then they are probably accustomed to
things 'just breaking' more often then they're willing to admit ;)
jms
