In 2018 I tried to figure out whether the rush to deploy new routing protocols in leaf-and-spine fabrics is anything more than another blob of hype (RIFT, OpenFabric, BGP), considering OSPF got the job done for AWS. Those discussions probably sounded like a bunch of smart kids trying to measure outside temperature with a moist finger, so the only recommendation I could give in 2021 was “use the best tool for the job, keeping in mind you’re not Google or Microsoft”

It’s always better to measure than to have opinions, and a group of academics did just that. They developed Sybil – a tool to measure routing protocol performance in leaf-and-spine fabrics – and Dip Singh used it to compare BGP to IS-IS and OpenFabric.