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Re: Seattle - Westin Building The WTO is in town
by Randy Bush 02 Dec '99

02 Dec '99

> Actually, they are connected via a skybridge. i knew i was stoopid. but blind is new. randy

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AS7170 flaps and resulting non-event
by John Todd 02 Dec '99

02 Dec '99

Starting on the 19th of this month, the Merit routing report shows that AT&T-DISC(AS7170) is having some serious flapping issues with the Merit route server at the MAE-East (ten million updates in a day, as an example.) Among other things, I'm interested if these flaps are being made to all peers of AS7170 at the MAE-East. If that is the case, then nobody has noticed, or nobody cares, or nobody has raised it in a public forum yet. If the silence has been caused by one of the first two situations, I'm interested in which is the true reason that there has been no hue and cry over this abnormal number of route insertions/removals. A few questions and items to chew on: 1: Is this something that anyone other than Merit is noticing? Could it be that AS7170 just doesn't have that many peers, or that the routes are flapping only to Merit's route server? 2: Is this just being dampened to the point where nobody notices? 3: Is the silence on this issue somehow indicative of the increased speed/memory of core routers in the North American and other routing structures? [main point] If so, then this changes some arguments about who and why one will/will not peer, as well as dragging the corpse of "Sprint filtering" out of the grave.[/main point] 4: Am I just reading this data incorrectly? I don't have a direct peer with 7170 anywhere, so I can't look at my own records for double-checking. Side notes: A: This isn't AT&T's only AS number - they have two others (7018 and 5075) that seem to be used for quite a few announcements. In fact, 7170 may not be the "primary" AS for AT&T - again, I don't have a crystal ball to see how they structure their announcements across the multiple AS'es. B: It's not easily possible for me to find which routes were flapping; could this be just a few routes out of the N that 7170 announces? (See http://www.merit.edu/~ipma/cooked/routing_table/view_in/mae-east/mae-e ast.7170.view.991128 for an exhaustive list of 7170's routes to Merit on the 28th) If it's only a few of the routes, then perhaps dampening by peers simply quashed the rogue networks into oblivion without anyone noticing that these few routes were missing. C: Could this be related? http://www.infoworld.com/cgi-bin/displayStory.pl?99121.icatt.htm I don't think so, but it's an interesting note nonetheless. I don't see how DNS could be attached to the route flaps, but again I don't have a crystal ball into AT&T's network. I've included selected sections from Merit's daily route flap mail. To see a complete list of the messages, browse to http://www.merit.net/mail.archives/html/routing-problems/ for more detail. Largest Sources of BGP Instability ---------------------------------- (announcements + withdraws = total) Dec 01: 1. AT&T-DISC (AS7170) at Mae-East 10432535 + 36800 = 10469335 BGP prefix updates Nov 30: 1. AT&T-DISC (AS7170) at Mae-East 10432535 + 36800 = 10469335 BGP prefix updates Nov 29: 1. AT&T-DISC (AS7170) at Mae-East 11122216 + 16465 = 11138681 BGP prefix updates Nov 28: 1. AT&T-DISC (AS7170) at Mae-East 10256555 + 17732 = 10274287 BGP prefix updates Nov 27: 1. AT&T-DISC (AS7170) at Mae-East 9882016 + 23527 = 9905543 BGP prefix updates . . [similar results in here] . Nov 19: 1. AT&T-DISC (AS7170) at Mae-East 2462647 + 93171 = 2555818 BGP prefix updates [AT&T-DISC does not show up in the mail from the 18th or 17th, leading me to think these flaps started during the measured interval reported on the 19th.] --- JT jtodd(a)loligo.com

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Re: Seattle - Westin Building The WTO is in town
by Sean Donelan 02 Dec '99

02 Dec '99

Some will remember the fun when NATO was in Washington DC earlier this year. Compared to Seattle that was nothing. One person pointed out, don't build NOCs and meet-me rooms in a building connected to the hotel where the US President is staying. Apparently the entire block was "locked down" for a while, and today the Westin is on the edge of the "limited curfew" area. See the newspaper article for more details. http://www.seattle-pi.com/local/lmtd02.shtml One ISP person required a police escort to get into work and another experienced tear gas up close and personal. Another person said you don't want to wear a suit or you might be mistaken for a WTO attendee. Existing services remain unaffected. One person reported some new installations are being delayed until after the WTO leaves town.

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Re: Perceived Y2K problems
by ken harris. 02 Dec '99

02 Dec '99

Eric Germann [09:23 PM 11/30/99 -0500] wrote: :sociological effects, namely, everyone watching the ball drop, then going :off hook to see if they have dial tone, or dialing in to the Internet to :see if it still works. Since most switches aren't designed for 100% off :hook load, anyone seen any studies as to whether the switches will crash :from that? actually, just yesterday i saw a tv commercial from the phone company informing everyone that the phone systems will work and to /not/ go ahead and pick up the phone, right away because that will cause a serious "problem". what the actual outcome of the problem may be they didn't mention (obviously), but i expect it can't be too wonderful if they are advertising that message on television. another one that's been popular, and i've heard, is that there isn't enough "cash" to go around for the demand that will be requested. but like so, banks have issued statements etc. actually my bank's statement included, "warning, carrying excessive amounts of money on you makes you a prime target for robbery." heh. -ken harris !k < ken at arpa dot com >

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ye olde backhoe...
by David Lesher 02 Dec '99

02 Dec '99

Sigh.... Construction job severs phone service for some in Jersey City The Associated Press 12/01/99 9:43 PM Eastern JERSEY CITY, N.J. (AP) -- Telephone service for up to 2,000 customers was cut after construction workers on Wednesday morning severed four Bell Atlantic cables in a residential area. ........ The cables that were cut have up to 6,000 access lines, but a majority of calls may go through other lines, Rodriguez said. -- A host is a host from coast to coast.................wb8foz(a)nrk.com & no one will talk to a host that's close........[v].(301) 56-LINUX Unless the host (that isn't close).........................pob 1433 is busy, hung or dead....................................20915-1433

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Re: Perceived Y2K problems
by Robert Cannon 01 Dec '99

01 Dec '99

The site to go to in order to get priority circuits is The Telecommunications Service Priority Program http://tsp.ncs.gov/ Any federal agency, including the FCC, can act as a sponsor. Information on the readiness of telecommunications can be found on the FCC's website www.fcc.gov/year2000/ The latest FCC Report, issued in October 1999, can be found at http://www.fcc.gov/year2000/telephoneb.html The latest NRIC Report, issued in November 1999, can be found at http://www.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Miscellaneous/News_Releases/1999/nrmc9074.html The introduction to the NRIC Report states "Washington, D.C. - November 9, 1999, - The U.S. Telecommunications Industry is virtually complete with its Year 2000 remediation and implementation programs and local and long distance services are expected to continue to function on and after January 1, 2000. In its latest, public report to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the Network Reliability and Interoperability Council (NRIC) IV announced that, based on input from telecommunications companies across the U.S., 100 percent of the switches, network elements and supporting software systems in the U.S. Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN), owned by large, Local Exchange Carriers (LECs) and large, long distance Inter-Exchange Carriers (IXCs), have been made Y2K ready. While small- and mid-sized LECs trail their larger LEC counterparts in achieving Y2K readiness, the NRIC reported that most of these carriers should be compliant by the end of December 1999." NRIC has created a guide to contingency planning. This is a simple guide which can be followed by any communications network, including Internet networks. It is available for you to freely download and use. The guide can be found on the Focus Group I website http://www.nric.org/fg/fg1/index.html Look under subcommittee 3 for a collection of documents. You specifically want: "5.NRIC Contingency Planning Guidelines: A step-by-step guide that takes the user from the identification of critical business functions and infrastructure to the identification of high risk Y2K scenarios to the development and testing of contingency planning strategies and plans. (nric-cp-guide.doc, revised 1999-01-14, 461kB)" And yes, one of the messages of NRIC, the FCC, and the White House is please do not simply pick up your phone at midnight to see if there is dial tone. Robert Cannon Senior Counsel Office of Plans and Policy Federal Communications Commission rcannon(a)fcc.gov ______________________________________________ FREE Personalized Email at Mail.com Sign up at http://www.mail.com?sr=mc.mk.mcm.tag001

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Seattle - Westin Building The WTO is in town
by Sean Donelan 01 Dec '99

01 Dec '99

The Westin Building in Seattle, a major multi-ISP hub, is located in the middle of the World Trade Organization festivities and curfew area. Even during the day, getting around the streets in that area can be difficult. Some folks in the area are bored and sent me mail. It seems the people in the building are stuck there until morning, the people outside the area can't get to work until later.

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Re: Perceived Y2K problems
by Sean Donelan 01 Dec '99

01 Dec '99

On Tue, 30 November 1999, Jared Mauch wrote: > I find this quite an interesting challenge, if you can't place > a call, you can't get paged to know that your router in some remote > site just died, nor can they call to tell you, nor can you call the > utilities to determine why. For those deemed important enough, there are alternative switches and communication lines in place to contact utilities and such. ISPs providing necessary services can qualify for preferential treatment. The two buzzwords you need are GETS and TSP. Additional information is available from the FCC http://www.fcc.gov/ and NCS http://www.ncs.gov/ The FCC or NCS will act as the "sponsor" for qualifying ISPs. Yep, its like the ARPANET all over again, you need a "sponsor." When I applied, it took about two weeks. Interestingly enough, the Internet has been used as a backup communications channel for several events already. But because of the unreliable reputation of the Internet (FUD), agency managers haven't wanted to publicize they were using the net.

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Perceived Y2K problems
by Eric Germann 01 Dec '99

01 Dec '99

Anyone thought on the telco side yet about perceived issues with Y2K? Specifically, I was discussing with one of my telco guys about the sociological effects, namely, everyone watching the ball drop, then going off hook to see if they have dial tone, or dialing in to the Internet to see if it still works. Since most switches aren't designed for 100% off hook load, anyone seen any studies as to whether the switches will crash from that? I do envision seconds to get dialtone. I remember in our college days the new Nortel from Sprint took about 4 seconds to give us dialtone right after the Gulf War bombing started (mostly paranoid college guys debating if they were eligible for the draft I believe). Anyways, thoughts? Eric ========================================================================== Eric Germann Inacom Info Systems ekgermann(a)cctec.com Lima, OH 45801 Ph: 419 331 9050 ICQ: 41927048 Fax: 419 331 9302 "It is so easy to miss pretty trivial solutions to problems deemed complicated. The goal of a scientist is to find an interesting problem, and live off it for a while. The goal of an engineer is to evade interesting problems :)" -- Vadim Antonov <avg(a)kotovnik.com> on NANOG

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Re: Perceived Y2K problems
by David Lesher 01 Dec '99

01 Dec '99

Unnamed Administration sources reported that Alan Clegg said: > > But the phone system in Raleigh, North Carolina crashed for a day when > Garth Brooks tickets went on sale by phone. No matter where you called, > you got a busy signal IF you managed to get a dial-tone at all. Crashed?? Or just got molassas-slow? It's *designed* to do that, to protect itself.... (If M$ was as reliable as telco switches, then Jill Winecooler's UAE/GPF would be a lead story on the TV news....) -- A host is a host from coast to coast.................wb8foz(a)nrk.com & no one will talk to a host that's close........[v].(301) 56-LINUX Unless the host (that isn't close).........................pob 1433 is busy, hung or dead....................................20915-1433

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