Jared Mauch writes: > No really, the reason for some leaks isn't because so-and-so was >never a customer, they were. 5 years ago. nobody removed the routes from >the IRR or AS-SET or <insert method here> and now the route is learned via >some other location and it's bypassed your perimiter security and >infiltrated your BGP.
The issue of cleaning up legacy state for former customers applies to many things beyond route announcements - though the latter may be one of the more visible remnants. I suspect relatively few companies can accurately and completely track the state associated with a customer such that it can be removed once the customer billing stops. (Or they stop paying.) This really needs to be automated and the backend databases need a way to associate records with particular billing entities, or else you will find yourself slowly cleaning up after past customers at inconvenient moments for years. Joe