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Re: Network Configuration Management Practices
by Robert Bonomi 14 Sep '04

14 Sep '04

> Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2004 12:08:34 -1000 (HST) > Cc: nanog(a)merit.edu > Subject: Re: Network Configuration Management Practices > > On Tue, 14 Sep 2004, Carl W.Kalbfleisch wrote: > > : I am doing some independent research on Network Configuration > : Management Practices. I am trying to get information from service > : providers and enterprises on how they handle this function. I have the > : following specific questions: > : > : 1) What configuration issues most affect the performance and > : reliability of your network? > > Fingers... >;-) "Fat" ones, to be more specific. <wry grin>

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RE: Email Complexes
by David A. Ulevitch 14 Sep '04

14 Sep '04

<quote who="Hosman, Ross"> > We like automating a lot of our procedures as our mail complex isn't > staffed > 24/7. That's not surprising. > Right now we have a script that monitors incoming mail sent from > probes across the us. It monitors how long it takes the email to first hit > the IronPort's, then how long it takes to hit the Brightmail, then how > long > it takes to hit the MTA's. Reverse the wires, the rest of the internet would appreciate it. You missed the point of my previous email. Thousands of hours are wasted by engineers dealing with abuse that is not insignificantly caused by Charter. And now "Charter" (not you, but Charter) is asking for some free accounts so they can enhance their "mail complex." You *are* Charter and netops *is* a two-way street, please act accordingly. Don't just say it isn't your department because guess what, it's all of our departments. -david ---------------------------------------------------- David A. Ulevitch - Founder, EveryDNS.Net http://david.ulevitch.com -- http://everydns.net ----------------------------------------------------

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[Fwd: RE: Email Complexes]
by Mark Foster 14 Sep '04

14 Sep '04

[My first response was direct to Ross. This has been paraphrased slightly to make it useful (hopefully) to NANOG...] -------- Original Message -------- Subject: RE: Email Complexes Date: Wed, September 15, 2004 9:53 am Hi Ross :) Please don't get me wrong, I applaud your efforts, because you're right - email is huge, and most customers don't have a reasonable expectation of the service to be expected in terms of mail delivery between providers. ("What do you mean its not there yet! I sent it 10 minutes ago!") My point is that by posting on NANOG saying 'give me an account please' for the purpose of keeping *your* customers happy strikes me as, well, interesting. You have the resources to monitor your own mail systems by watching your outbound mail queue. Every daemon I know of has ways of monitoring the outbound queue, and verifying that you're definately offloading mail to advertised MX's. I noticed an example for Sendmail was quoted on the list a short while ago. This is stuff you can influence - its your systems. Thats where i'd expect you to concentrate your efforts. By extension of this, it's not unreasonable for this information to perhaps be scripted and monitored via a web interface - nagios? - and made available to your upper echilon support staff. Hell at one of the ISPs I worked for - as a Tier 1 and 2 support tech - I had shell access to one of the unix boxes and a commandline script which would tell me how much mail was in the queue. If this remained low, I could verify there wasnt a problem. If it spiked, then I escalated a query to the NOC to find out what the story was. At the ISP I work for currently we dont even have that sort of information. If mail gets delayed we troubleshoot *without* that information. We're an ISP with 500,000 customers and have a team of ~15 technical specialists whos expertise closes on that of a junior NOC engineer. They successfully deal with all manner of technical queries and they can call the NOC directly to find out if theres anything odd going on server-side. They also clearly explain to any Tier 1's (and any customers) they speak to that email is not a guarunteed service, and is delayed from time to time, and theres nothing we can do except make sure that *our systems* are working as well as possible. Who's to say that your monitoring wont be thrown off by problems at $third_party ? Parsing headers is a good way to identify total delivery times, but anything beyond your own MX's is outside of your control anyway, so outside of casual interest I see little value in actually knowing exactly whats broken at AOL and Gmail, etc. (Isnt this AOL and Gmails problem, not yours?) Get queue monitoring. Script it to make the details available via the Web to your senior tech support staff. And remind your support guys that email is not guarunteed, and you'll do your level best to keep things running smoothly, but that once the mail leaves the network its outside of your control. So once you've verified that it has infact left your network, your job is done. Mark. (Disclaimer: Comments are mine and mine alone, and do not represent my employer or any previous employer for that matter.) > Let me see if I can explain your entire email. > > Ensuring that email flows freely between our mail complex and other top > mail provider complexes is a support issue correct. Actually setting up > the system to monitor and to ensure the support people get the data > they need is operations/engineering. > > We like automating a lot of our procedures as our mail complex isn't > staffed 24/7. Right now we have a script that monitors incoming mail > sent from probes across the us. It monitors how long it takes the email > to first hit the IronPort's, then how long it takes to hit the > Brightmail, then how long it takes to hit the MTA's. Our script uses > pop3 to grab the email and parse the headers we send from the probes > (or in this case from the complex to the pop accounts). Yes I do > realize some are webmail (AOL, MSN, Gmail), but even a lot of the > webmail providers do have pop3 servers. > > Our intent here is not not only verify that the email got there but > that it got there in a reasonable time (lets face it email is becoming > a more imporant part of life/business today). > > As fair as teaching the support guys to go look at the mail queue, > would you honestly want them to be doing that? We have over 65 mail > machines and should I trust them with checking them every 10 min? Since > we are not staffed 24/7 what happeneds if we have all gone home? The > way we have it setup if the mail never reaches the complex tier-1 gets > a page, 15 minutes later if the problem still isn't solved tier-2 gets > a page. I believe automating the system rather then trutsing a staff > member to check it and to pray that it dosen't break during the night > is a much better way of doing it. > *snip*

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Re: Network Configuration Management Practices
by Carl W.Kalbfleisch 14 Sep '04

14 Sep '04

On Sep 14, 2004, at 4:09 PM, Florian Weimer wrote: > * Carl W. Kalbfleisch: > >> 4) Does your configuration management software integrate with your >> network fault and performance management system? If so, what level of >> integration do you have? If not, is this integration something you >> desire? > > You don't mention integration with CRM systems. Is this already > standard practice, or is it considered unnecessary or maybe even > impossible? > > Integration should be entirely possible. It is just out of the scope of what I am currently investigating. Carl

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RE: Graphical displays of latency/packet loss for Top Internet backbones
by Don Lundquist 14 Sep '04

14 Sep '04

In regards to the graphs displayed on this link can anyone provide information regarding the network background and services offered through the Savvis backbone? They are showing very well in the response times all around on this link and it would be helpful to hear what some folks experiences with them have been. Please reply off list as I would not "think" that this is the forum to share personal comments regarding their services. Regards, Don L -----Original Message----- From: owner-nanog(a)merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog@merit.edu]On Behalf Of David Vincent Sent: Tuesday, September 14, 2004 3:37 PM To: nanog(a)merit.edu Subject: Re: Graphical displays of latency/packet loss for Top Internet backbones Hank Nussbacher wrote: >In addition to the Qwest and AT&T links sent try: >http://internetpulse.net/ for latency numbers > > > there's also http://www.internettrafficreport.com -d

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RE: Email Complexes
by Hosman, Ross 14 Sep '04

14 Sep '04

As I stated before I do not handle abuse issues, it is not my position nor my department. There is no expense as I'm trying to do the job I'm paid for. As I think I have shown I'm willing to help with anyway I can, but I'm still going to do *my* job. -----Original Message----- From: David A. Ulevitch [mailto:davidu@everydns.net] Sent: Tuesday, September 14, 2004 3:10 PM To: Hosman, Ross; nanog(a)merit.edu Subject: RE: Email Complexes <quote who="Hosman, Ross"> > > Your right this isn't my department and it's not my place to tell them how > to do their job. If Roy would like to send me a valid abuse complaint I'll > make sure to forward it on or even walk it over to the abuse department > supervisor. > > I would also like to say I'm suprised at how many people have been > attacking > me on/off the list for asking a simple question. 1) You are posting with your employers email address and thus opened yourself up as a conduit to "the man" at Charter. If you didn't want that, you could do what many people do and post via a vanity address. 2) Perhaps you could take all these complaints as a way of saying "maybe instead of making sure charter can email all these other networks I should make sure charter CANT email all these other networks." :) It's always good to monitor and optimize but not at the expense of dealing with outstanding support/abuse issues. -david ---------------------------------------------------- David A. Ulevitch - Founder, EveryDNS.Net http://david.ulevitch.com -- http://everydns.net ----------------------------------------------------

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PSU Contact
by James Baldwin 14 Sep '04

14 Sep '04

I'm looking for a mail administrator or security contact at PSU.edu (Penn State). Please ping me off list if you know anyone. Thanks --- James Baldwin

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RE: Email Complexes
by David A. Ulevitch 14 Sep '04

14 Sep '04

<quote who="Hosman, Ross"> > > Your right this isn't my department and it's not my place to tell them how > to do their job. If Roy would like to send me a valid abuse complaint I'll > make sure to forward it on or even walk it over to the abuse department > supervisor. > > I would also like to say I'm suprised at how many people have been > attacking > me on/off the list for asking a simple question. 1) You are posting with your employers email address and thus opened yourself up as a conduit to "the man" at Charter. If you didn't want that, you could do what many people do and post via a vanity address. 2) Perhaps you could take all these complaints as a way of saying "maybe instead of making sure charter can email all these other networks I should make sure charter CANT email all these other networks." :) It's always good to monitor and optimize but not at the expense of dealing with outstanding support/abuse issues. -david ---------------------------------------------------- David A. Ulevitch - Founder, EveryDNS.Net http://david.ulevitch.com -- http://everydns.net ----------------------------------------------------

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world phones
by Jeff Wheeler 14 Sep '04

14 Sep '04

I know this topic has already passed, but this article describes one other possible avenue for the only-GSM-for-me crowd that may open a couple additional providers to your list of options.... http://news.com.com/The+world+in+your+palm/2100-1039_3-5364524.html? tag=nefd.top -- Jeff Wheeler Postmaster, Network Admin US Institute of Peace

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RE: Email Complexes
by Hosman, Ross 14 Sep '04

14 Sep '04

Your right this isn't my department and it's not my place to tell them how to do their job. If Roy would like to send me a valid abuse complaint I'll make sure to forward it on or even walk it over to the abuse department supervisor. I would also like to say I'm suprised at how many people have been attacking me on/off the list for asking a simple question. I'm just trying to ensure people are able to recieve/send mail from/to charter's mail complex. I didn't think asking for some help would be a big deal (as I thought there might be some people on the list from the companies that were knowledgeable instead of having to deal with typical tier-1 support). -----Original Message----- From: Paul Bradford [mailto:paul@adelphiacom.net] Sent: Tuesday, September 14, 2004 1:31 PM To: Roy Cc: Hosman, Ross; nanog(a)merit.edu Subject: RE: Email Complexes Come on... what is this.... Ross doesn't have the ability to put more "clueful" people in abuse, he's prolly an engineer like you and me.... we just want to fix the network.... why take this e-mail as a chance to bash Charter? Ease up, Paul On Tue, 2004-09-14 at 14:01, Roy wrote: > I suggest you concentrate some resources in your abuse department. One > charter IP address hit my firewall 1617 times so far today. Repeated > complaints to abuse(a)charter.net just get ignored. > > According to the local newspaper, my fellow citizens consider Charter the > worst company in town. > > Roy

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