September 2001 - NANOG - lists.nanog.org

RE: GPS SA and Network Timing
by Hire, Ejay 26 Sep '01

26 Sep '01

In our next episode of Militant dictator How-to, we'll show you how to upgrade an antique scud missile to with a guidance system capable of 3-meter accuracy for less than $500.00 per unit.. Stay tuned! -----Original Message----- From: Ian A Finlay [mailto:iaf@andrew.cmu.edu] Sent: Wednesday, September 26, 2001 10:03 AM To: Eric Germann Cc: nanog(a)merit.edu Subject: RE: GPS SA and Network Timing Hello Eric, I recently purchased a GPS. The manual indicates that SA has no effect on timing. SA only affects positioning. Actually, I just downloaded the latest firmware. They now have something called WAAS (http://www.magellangps.com/press/general/pr010521waas.htm) Quoting from that URL: "WAAS, developed by the United States government, calculates errors in the GPS signal then transmits correction messages to WAAS-capable GPS receivers. Upgraded Magellan receivers provide higher accuracy, not only from WAAS signals, but also when receiving correction signals from the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay System (EGNOS), which covers Europe. Additionally, projected specifications for the forthcoming Multifunctional Transport Satellite-based Augmentation System (MSAS) for Asia suggest that upgraded Magellan receivers will work with this system as well. As a result, Magellan customers will gain better than three-meter positioning accuracy throughout much of the world." Regards, Ian

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Re: GPS SA and Network Timing
by rs＠seastrom.com 26 Sep '01

26 Sep '01

"Eric Germann" <ekgermann(a)cctec.com> writes: > During the recent attacks, there was a brief discussion as to whether the > USG had or would invoke GPS SA. We have a client who is building a broad > ATM network and had planned to use GPS based timing solutions from TrueTime > for a clocking source, in addition to a feed from the LEC. > > If GPS SA is invoked down the road during a crisis, what effect is there, if > any, on networks which rely on GPS for timing, not positioning? If one is running in locked-position mode (supported by many receiver elements that are designed specifically for timing applications such as the Motorola Oncore UT; I'm not sure what is inside the Truetime, but it wouldn't surprise me to find it's one of the Oncore family...), induced error is substantially less, but even in the worst case, you're looking at tens to a couple of hundred nanoseconds. In short, nothing that you would notice if you're using GPS as an NTP source. Be aware though (getting back to your original question) that even in the best of times jitter on GPS is more than you would really like to have for a telecom clocking application. This is mitigated somewhat by the fact that you are not getting raw GPS data in most cases, but rather the output from a crystal oscillator that is "steered" by GPS. The high-end GPS-based units often have an OCXO instead of an el-cheapo crystal, in order to help hold-over performance. The GPS-based timing vendors would have you believe that GPS is every bit as good as cesium for a stratum 1 frequency reference, and it's probably good enough for you too, but if you want to be pedantic about it, it's not as good. Does it really matter? I don't think so... particularly in the context of the price of a Cs standard. If the LEC is willing to give you a feed, though, why worry about it? I've seen applications that only have a LEC feed run for years on end. You could always get a rubidium standard (cheaper than Cs by a long shot) if you're worried about what happens if your feed from the LEC dies... ---Rob

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The wyrms and the law.
by Roeland Meyer 26 Sep '01

26 Sep '01

Life just got more interesting for the crackers. http://www.securityfocus.com/news/257 Yesterday a new virus was announced on the news. It's only an email virus, but in light of the above, the timing is interesting. The bar is being raised. Between Code Red and Nimda, the past few months have been most interesting, network-wise. By any stretch of the imagination, wyrm spawning falls well within the boundary of "terrorist acts". The idea is that; to coerce behavior, via threat of harm or direct action to commit harm, is an act of terrorism. There goes the argument that crackers are doing us all a favor by exploiting security holes. -- R O E L A N D M J M E Y E R Managing Director Morgan Hill Software Company tel: +1 925 373 3954 cel: +1 925 352 3615 fax: +1 925 373 9781 http://www.mhsc.com

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RE: Points of Failure (was Re: National infrastructure asset) (fw d)
by Roeland Meyer 26 Sep '01

26 Sep '01

|> From: Grant A. Kirkwood [mailto:grant@virtical.net] |> Sent: Tuesday, September 25, 2001 7:56 PM |> Rafi Sadowsky wrote: |> > <http://www.thebunker.net/index.htm> |> Anybody want to partner up in a business venture with me? I've always |> thought it'd be cool to buy one of those missile silos in Wyoming and |> build a datacenter like this. ;) I looked into this once. There was a similar site available in Oakland, CA, for a while (I don't know if it still is). All of the above plus it was built to handle shake'n'bake (8.3 Richter).

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Re: Points of Failure (was Re: National infrastructure asset) (fwd)
by George William Herbert 26 Sep '01

26 Sep '01

David Lesher <wb8foz(a)nrk.com> wrote: > George William Herbert leaked to the press: The press are here? I thought we were safer than that ;-) >> On top of that, none of these facilities are sufficiently hardened. >> What takes a backhoe operator ten minutes by accident would be no more >> than an hours work by hand of a sufficiently educated attacker. >> None of these telco buildings are hardened in the traditional >> anti-terrorist sense of the word. There are still co-loc facilities >> in buildings shared with offices of unrelated companies, etc., >> there are still co-loc facilities in buildings with windows into >> server rooms, etc. I could go on but will stop now. The situation >> is hopeless in many areas. > >Fixing THAT is a far far harder issue. We did tackle it once. >It's called variously "Continuity Of Government" or "ATT >Underground" or "L4".. During our last Cold War, ATT spend a few >zillion rate-payer dollars building hardened underground facilities >for the #5 Transcontinental Coaxial Cable. The #5 was buried deep >{~48"} from coast to coast. The underground facilities were solid; >some rated for 10psi shock waves. (The crapper is hung on springs...) >Air filters; generators; airlocks. There was also hardened microwave; >check out the "dish in the hillside" at Mt. Weather. > >Most have been sold off, but not all. (DSN is based in one, as is >GEP.) We gave up when things like MIRVS made it obvious that >the undergrounds could be direct targets. > >Plus, I strongly doubt any facility other than Cheyenne Mountain >or Site R would survive a 767 hit. We don't really need all our coloc buildings, telco switching centers, cable landings to resist a nearby nuclear blast or direct hit from a jumbo jet. Even at the WTC, only a fraction of the damage to telco gear was in buildings the jets hit. Most of the damage was not-hardened buildings nearby getting plastered, or buildings far enough away that they were structurally fine which suffered systems failures running independently in the long-term blackout that followed. Let's look at the "worst credible case" though, jet aircraft. Nuclear reactor domes are rated to survive jumbo jet hits. Jet aircraft are remarkably poor penetrators, in military terminal ballistics terms. Ten feet of good reinforced concrete, at $400/cu yd or so installed, will do the job nicely, though there may be some spalling inside the aircraft won't penetrate. For a 3 story, 120,000 sq ft 200x200x30 ft building that would be about $9.3 million, about $77.70/ft^2. That's a Big Deal but within reason for total building costs, and if your threat isn't quite as serious as "jumbo jets being rammed into building" but then you can have porportionally thinner walls on your bunker/building. Or you can substitute going underground or piling an earth mound on top for some of that. Not that I'm recommending every telco facility be hardened to resist a direct jumbo jet hit. But it's not that ridiculous a task, and lesser hardening (half or 1/3 that level) would be downright reasonable compared to the other costs of making these sorts of buildings for these roles. A 2 foot thick reinforced concrete wall, for example, might well be extremely reasonable. >> Longer term, we all need to think about multi-level hardening of facilities >> and connectivity to avoid "cheap kills" due to accident or malicious attack. >> This gets into traditional datacenter design issues and beyond, into building >> hardening (the new standards for Federal buildings, for example, or even >> better the new standards for US Embassies...). > >Note the biggest safety measure for both the above is also the >hardest to get & keep.... stand-off distance. It's especially >hard to maintain same when you have an active airport's flight >path going overhead. > >And the biggest impediment is the oldest one; they co$t. >LOTS. Who is going to pay? Stand-off distance is a big part of it, and critical if we're worried about carbombs and truckbombs. It's useless if we're worried about aircraft. And won't help at all if the company we leased 400 square feet of cage to brings 2 tons of Semtex in inside Sun E5500 cases. Think of the network firewalls analogy; hard exterior but vulnerable interior is only so good... not all the threats are external. Hell, there are buildings with natural gas service inside the same structural enclosure as the coloc machine room. That can turn into a bomb entirely by accident, much less malicious intent. Or what happens if someone knocks over one of your tanks of fire supression agent with a forklift, and it bounces around the machine room like a scuba tank does when the regulator's knocked off, only 100 times larger. Those can go through foot thick concrete walls or better. Or someone drills into your wet pipe sprinkler system by accident. There are many many angles to all of this. -george william herbert gherbert(a)retro.com

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RE: Points of Failure (was Re: National infrastructure asset) (fw d)
by Roeland Meyer 26 Sep '01

26 Sep '01

|> From: Rafi Sadowsky [mailto:rafi-nanog@meron.openu.ac.il] |> Sent: Tuesday, September 25, 2001 5:30 PM |> If you're paranoid & want your equipment to sustain a |> direct nuclear jit |> on the CoLo facility probably want to have a look at "The Bunker" |> (In the UK - sorry ;-) |> |> <http://www.thebunker.net/index.htm> |> |> It seems "The Bunker" is designed to survive a direct |> nuclear hit & you |> can get your own sealed room ( I guess it's not cheap though ...) |> |> A on-site supply of _3 months_ of generator fuel , etc .... ... and it's run by A.L. Digital, of Apache-SSL and OpenSSL fame. Physical AND Data security.

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Re: Points of Failure (was Re: National infrastructure asset)
by George William Herbert 25 Sep '01

25 Sep '01

Ray writes: >> I know it's difficult to refrain from comment, but let's try to remember >> that the bad guys read this list too. While they may not have the knowledge >> of critical communication infrastructure points, they can certainly find and >> target them if we point them in the right direction. > >I'd actually argue the opposite. It's difficult to face this, but we know >we ARE vulnerable. The important long term solution is that we need to >address our weaknesses. By acknowleding where the critical points are, >AND PLANNING TO DEAL WITH THEIR LOSS, we make the system that much harder to >defeat. Exactly. The short term situation is we're vulnerable; how do we deal with those vulnerabilities being exploited (or accidentally exposed). The long term situation is how to we reduce or eliminate as many of those as possible. Part of the insidiousness of all this is that currently there is insufficient information available to a telco line end user to properly plan for that sort of loss. Right now, it is nigh-on impossible to get, verify, and keep on a permanent basis truly widely separated leased lines / bandwidth from point A to point B. Because of the increasing cooperation, shared facilities, etc. in the telco and fiber arenas, with many providers you're really getting someone else's service for part of the connection. Recall the train tunnel fire from not that long ago, now seemingly trivial, but at the time a huge disaster... On top of that, none of these facilities are sufficiently hardened. What takes a backhoe operator ten minutes by accident would be no more than an hours work by hand of a sufficiently educated attacker. None of these telco buildings are hardened in the traditional anti-terrorist sense of the word. There are still co-loc facilities in buildings shared with offices of unrelated companies, etc., there are still co-loc facilities in buildings with windows into server rooms, etc. I could go on but will stop now. The situation is hopeless in many areas. What we have learned and need to deal with is that we are, and will remain for the forseeable future, vulnerable to large chunks of "stuff" dropping away, possibly permanently. Be that buildings, bandwidth, higher level protocols, the immediate response has to be to be prepared to replace or route around something. And by that I mean *anything*. If your NOC burns down or is blown up (or hit by a tornado, knock on wood...) do you have adequate personel and facilities elsewhere to recover your network management? Eliminate all fiber links from city A to city B, and can your network still function? If all your facilities in metropolitan area Z all go completely offline, what are you able to do about it? Longer term, we all need to think about multi-level hardening of facilities and connectivity to avoid "cheap kills" due to accident or malicious attack. This gets into traditional datacenter design issues and beyond, into building hardening (the new standards for Federal buildings, for example, or even better the new standards for US Embassies...). This is a bad time for people who run fiber, but maybe it's a good time for them to consider how they run that fiber and should run it in the future. Raw cable in shallow trenches may be in the long term more expensive (if we include accidents, and in particular vulnerability to intentional attack) than deeper and/or better protected cables. Using random rights-of-way may be a mistake; it may make more sense to use ROW which are known and controlled or patrolled to some degree already. I had brought up the idea of using modern oil-well drilling technology to go horizontally deep under rivers and city centers a month or so ago; that also introduces structural hardening against intentional or accidental attack on the fibers. The key here is *think* about it. There is probably some bad guy out there who already is, though he may never decide to execute on those thoughts on you (or anyone). Try and get to any conclusion he might first, and at the very least list our your known vulnerabilities at every level you can think of, so that you can work on reducing them over time and conceptually be prepared to deal with them even if you can't afford to do detailed plans for everything that might go wrong. -george william herbert gherbert(a)retro.com

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Our Qwest Testimonial: qwestoutage.com
by Allen Gwinn 25 Sep '01

25 Sep '01

Greetings, Simply put, they've put us through hell, so I've put a website up to tell our story at qwestoutage.com. I'd be interested in feedback--especially anyone that has had similar or different experiences than we've had. I've heard from another customer (DS-3 customer) who has had fairly good experience. His comment was, "the hardest thing to do is to get their attention--but once you do that, they're fairly responsive." I heard from one more that is decommissioning their Qwest circuits nationwide and moving back to UUNET. Thanks, Allen

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RE: AT&T network recovery preparations
by Matt Zito 25 Sep '01

25 Sep '01

> -----Original Message----- > From: Sean Donelan [mailto:sean@donelan.com] > Sent: Friday, September 21, 2001 6:57 PM > To: nanog(a)merit.edu > Subject: AT&T network recovery preparations > > > > > As far as I know, AT&T is the only carrier which maintained > the ability to rebuild an entire central office from a "smoking > hole in the ground." Last year the program budget was in danger > of being cut, and the program eliminated because it had never > been needed. It was an expense, which couldn't be justified. > I spoke with one of the managers last year, and he said "It > would only take one catastrophe to pay for my entire budget." > I don't believe he was thinking of this. > > http://www.att.com/network/recovery/preparing.html > > > Along those lines: I don't know if all of the colos are reacting this way, but at AT&T's datacenter @ 811 10th Avenue in Manhattan, the security there has gone into crisis mode. The steel doors are down to the main entrance - everyone must enter through a side door, where your bags are thoroughly searched and IDs checked to the Nth degree. Something that's always been interesting about that facility as well are the "Duress lights" at many of the corner junctions near security outposts. There's a sign right next to these lights that reads "If the adjacent light is lit, a security condition may exist around this corner. Entering may constitute a serious risk to your person", or something like that. Nice to know that they take security seriously. Matt -- Matthew J. Zito Systems Engineer Register.com, Inc., 11th Floor, 575 8th Avenue, New York, NY 10018 Ph: 212-798-9205 PGP Key Fingerprint: 4E AC E1 0B BE DD 7D BC D2 06 B2 B0 BF 55 68 99

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Re: Points of Failure (was Re: National infrastructure asset)
by George William Herbert 25 Sep '01

25 Sep '01

Sean writes: >Travis Pugh wrote: >> I was able to procure extremely detailed route information from multiple >> CLECs and Verizon in the Boston area when researching both dark fiber and >> SONET purchases, up to and including street-level maps. Long-haul providers >> also are able to provide detailed route information, if you're willing to >> ask -- the key is to be an educated buyer. > >Getting the maps is the "easy" part. Keeping track of where your >circuit is after six months is the hard part. I've spoken to people >who even had "dark fiber" groomed into a single path. > >When even NORAD and VISA have had problems maintaining diversity, I >find it hard to believe it is a simple as saying the key is to be >an educated buyer. Heck, I know major, major carriers which have >wiped out all the circuits to their own NOC. > >If it was so simple, everyone would do it. I think Travis does have a point, though, I bet there are a lot of people out there who didn't even bother to do the first try at it, partly out of lazyness, partly out of despair knowing that the maps will change eventually and tracking it may be impractical at some levels. I suspect more people need to make that effort, and the more people making that effort the easier it may become to actually track and maintain the diversity over time. That the tracking may not be in realtime and may not be 100% accurate doesn't mean that more info more of the time isn't an improvement. -george william herbert gherbert(a)retro.com

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