| FAQ |
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| Networking : Tricky Ones : NULL0 to Black Hole the Network? |
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| Question: | I have an extremely large vlsm network. I use the NULL0 statement to black hole the whole network so the parts of the network that I’m not using are just dumped into the black hole. This keeps things interesting for nosy people. Is this a waste of time and router resource?
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| Answer: | Personally, I think this is a GREAT idea! I enjoy the humor value about confusing nosy people, but it also gives you a way to manage the “clutter” on your network and not worry about extraneous traffic bouncing around from router to router.
I’m sure being on a large network, you get your share of things like ping sweeps or other types of network probes. Imagine the bandwidth that would be used if you summarized differently and didn’t kill this traffic off quickly (e.g. nearest to the perimeter of the Internet)? The Null0 routes really don’t waste resources on the router. As for the portion about wasting time, the answer would depend on the placement of this Null0 route compared to the design of your network. Do filtering like this on the perimeters. That way traffic isn’t flowing into the network and clogging multiple links for no reason. Now, with that in mind, make sure whatever routers are doing this have all of the necessary routing information! Your goal is to kill bad traffic, not good traffic! Happy hunting the nosy people! |
| last updated 01.03.2003 | |
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