July 2001 - Test - lists.nanog.org

Re: Update: CSX train derailment
by George William Herbert 23 Jul '01

23 Jul '01

One of the things that may change over time is that some of the new drilling technologies being used in oil drilling, drilling with turns, angles, and horizontal drilling, may become viable for many telecom conduit builds. You can do about 5 horizontal miles today, and that would get you around or under nearly all obstacles such as rivers, and would in fact be enough to run deep *under* metro centers when you're trying to go through rather than into the builtup area. Those are more expensive to do than traditional trenching or hanging in existing rail tunnels or off bridges though, so it may not be cost effective except in limited areas. -george william herbert gherbert(a)retro.com

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Redundant diversity and rights of way
by Roeland Meyer 23 Jul '01

23 Jul '01

> From: up(a)3.am [mailto:up@3.am] > Sent: Sunday, July 22, 2001 7:45 AM > Subject: RE: Update: CSX train derailment > > On Sat, 21 Jul 2001, Jamie Bowden wrote: > Subject: RE: Update: CSX train derailment > > > On Sat, 21 Jul 2001 up(a)3.am wrote: > > Subject: RE: Update: CSX train derailment > > > > > > > On Sat, 21 Jul 2001, Roeland Meyer wrote: > > > > Subject: RE: Update: CSX train derailment > > > > > > > > :Have you checked available rights of way lately? They > > > > :haven't changed much for quite a while. Telecom has > > > > :not really any ability to build dedicated bridges for > > > > :telcom fibre. It uses existing facilities wherever > > > > :possible. Following the paths of least cost/resistance, > > > > :this pretty much determines that rivers and bridges > > > > :become choke-points. The only real alternatives are > > > > :microwave towers (a cost/benefit argument I won't > > > > :touch, even with your ten-foot pole). > > > > > > I would think that if fiber can be run across oceans > > > without using tunnels or bridges, that it could be run > > > across some rivers much the same way, no? > > > > How were [you] planning to get to that > > [river|stream|lake|etc]shore? The rights of way lead to > > existing bridges and tunnels. Buying a contiguous right > > of way in America is exorbitantly expensive, if it's even > > possible, which I highly doubt. If you're already at a > > bridge, tunnel, whatever, (because hey, that's where > > the existing right of way you're using takes > > you) why wouldn't you use it? > > I didn't think we were discussing right-of-way issues, so > much as diverse redundancy issues at "choke points" (see > above). If everybody's fiber goes through the same tunnel, > and the tunnel has a bad fire, that can lead to nasty > outages...wait, it just *did* that, didn't it (not that > this situation was even a river, but I digress)? Anyway, it > would seem that unless you bury it fairly deeply under the > riverbed, it ain't such a great idea. There goes my > Mensa application... Right of way and redundant diversity is deeply intertwined. One can't have diversity without redundant rights of way and one doesn't need redundant rights of way without the need for diversity. Having been through this, from the RBOC side, I can tell you that even the RBOCs have serious problems with this. Basically, the rights of way that are extant are often the ONLY rights of way obtainable. They were acquired decades ago, by AT&T and others, and any new rights of way are individually negotiated (and paid) at exhorbitant costs. It gets worse going through local municipalities that look at the telco as having near-government depth pockets (almost guaranteed to not be the case). Many of those municipalities also fly the "jolly roger" and don't mind resorting to extortionary practices (yes, were I still working at said RBOC, I would be disciplined for saying that). On the other hand, I can understand their [municipality] desire to integrate and consolidate the infrastructure going through their territory/domain and to minimize build-out impact and trenching activity in public areas. The problem is that this happens on a case by case basis and, in the case of an area like Los Angeles, mile by mile. This exacerbates the expense as cumulative cost, end to end, for a given route, increases with the number of municipalities that have to be paid along the way. I might point out that this is also deeply related to last-mile issues and why ILECs have such an advantage over CLECS. But, I digress. For rural routes and rights of way the problem is different and mainly based on geo-physical issues, like mountains, rivers, lakes, and fault-lines. As an example, many rights of way follow I-70, through the Rockies. This is because cutting an independent path, through 36 fourteeners, is enormously expensive and the Feds have already paid for I-70. Adding some conduit to an existing Interstate is substantially cheaper. It also gives you maintenance access to said conduit, that someone else will keep cleared, throughout the Rocky Mountain Winters. Tunnels and bridges are in this same catagory, as are oil pipelines and railroads. But, in each case, access to the right of way has to be negotiated with each owner. I guarantee that they've had the same issues, in obtaining their extant right of way, and will charge accordingly. IOW, it will be less expensive, but not by that much, usually involving some sort of revenue sharing. In short, one can theoretically demand redundant diversity of routes, but may not be able to achieve that goal in practice. Those that have higher expectations need to have those expectations examined. -- R O E L A N D M J M E Y E R Managing Director Morgan Hill Software Company t:01 925 373 3954 c:01 925 352 3615 f:01 925 373 9781

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RE: Update: CSX train derailment
by Roeland Meyer 22 Jul '01

22 Jul '01

Have you checked available rights of way lately? They haven't changed much for quite a while. Telecom has not really any ability to build dedicated bridges for telcom fibre. It uses existing facilities wherever possible. Following the paths of least cost/resistance, this pretty much determines that rivers and bridges become choke-points. The only real alternatives are microwave towers (a cost/benefit argument I won't touch, even with your ten-foot pole). WRT the other comment about that MCI conduit on the tunnel wall, I have reports that temperatures are exceeding 1000F, near the fire. I submit that no amount of armor-clading is going to shield that cable, from those temps. The only cable that might survive is whatever may be buried under the road-bed. > -----Original Message----- > From: Brian Wallingford [mailto:brian@meganet.net] > Sent: Saturday, July 21, 2001 1:28 AM > To: Sean Donelan > Cc: nanog(a)merit.edu > Subject: Re: Update: CSX train derailment > > > > "Rivers and bridges"? > > Either Frank is sensationalizing his comments for the benefit of the > press, or he's been asleep since '93. > > Seems to me the so-called "choke-points" now are more social > and fiscal > than physical - I doubt rivers and bridges are much of an issue. > > > > > > :According to the Baltimore Sun, companies have laid 30,000 feet of > :emergency fiber to patch around the damage in the Howard Tunnel. > : > : "There was a ripple effect around the country with > corporate networks > : due to this Baltimore disaster," said Frank Stanton, an > executive with > : Lexent Inc., a New York-based company that repaired > fiber-optic cable > : after the World Trade Center bombing in 1993. "Everybody > thinks they > : have redundancy, but these type incidents show people > there are huge > : issues. When you cross rivers and bridges, these choke > points are the > : Achilles' heel." > : > :On the Washington DC to New York City fiber route, there seems to be > :at least one train derailment leading to significant network traffic > :re-routes every year. >

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filtering whitehouse.gov?
by Sabri Berisha 22 Jul '01

22 Jul '01

Hi all, A couple of days ago I mentioned here that I have nullrouted the IP which whitehouse.gov resolves to. After that I received some mail in private mentioning not only the fact that I filtered the wrong IP (that's fixt now) but also the dangers of posting about such a thing here. "Hey, he nullroutes them, let's do it too!". My decision to nullroute whitehouse.gov was based on the following: - the traceroute from my net to whitehouse.gov goes through AT&T which means that any DoS packets originating from our network will affect that network too; - my customerbase is not that type that would visit whitehouse.gov frequently nor would whitehouse.gov (if coming from that IP as a source) be interested in any of my customers; - most of the boxes in our network have a 100mbit/s nic in their box. Our main uplink is a STM-1 at the moment so if a colocated NT box would be compromised, that would give a huge effect. Imagine what would happen if 2 or three boxes are infected. After careful consideration we (our engineering team and the CEO) decided we would not want to be a part of any attacks against the US government or any other network. If you have any reasons to believe you need to blackhole whitehouse.gov please do so, but don't blackhole just because others do it as well. -- /* Sabri Berisha CCNA,BOFH,+iO O.O speaking for just myself * Join HAL!!: www.HAL2001.org ____oOo_U_oOo____ http://www.bit.nl/~sabri * "We deliver quality services, we just can't get it on the internet" * Anonymous sysadmin - on IRC */

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RE: Update: CSX train derailment
by Roeland Meyer 21 Jul '01

21 Jul '01

> From: up(a)3.am [mailto:up@3.am] > Sent: Saturday, July 21, 2001 9:50 AM > > On Sat, 21 Jul 2001, Randy Bush wrote: > > > > I would think that if fiber can be run across oceans > without using tunnels > > > or bridges, that it could be run across some rivers much > the same way, no? > > > > the biggest exposure to cut for wet fiber is shallow water. > anchors, > > idiots, ... > > Yes, I can see that; but I imagine you could handle this much the way > fiber is handled near the shoreline. Bury it a few feet > under the mud or sand. Not trivial when erosion makes huge changes in river beds. Please plot changes in the lower Mississippi River for the past 200 years. Note the, sometimes, seasonal changes. Note also, the regular changes in sand-bar locations along the entire length of same river. It is definitely a more chaotic environment than your average seashore.

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Code Red on dial-in ppp
by Mitch Halmu 21 Jul '01

21 Jul '01

You may have received the following from codered(a)securityfocus.com This mail is from the ARIS Analyzer Service (Attack Registry and Intelligence Service) from SecurityFocus. It has come to our attention that your system(s), listed below have been identified as being compromised by the Code Red Worm. The Code Red Worm is rapidly spreading across the Internet, compromising vulnerable Windows NT IIS servers. The addresses identified as belonging to you are as follows: [ dynamic dial-in ip ] [ dynamic dial-in ip ] [snip] This makes me think that the worm is capable to infect not only dedicated web servers, but also dial-in customers running ppp that happen to be online when the attack occurs. NetSide is an all Sun sparc shop and we don't have any Windows based machines, but I can see this worm being alive and spreading for a long time if dial-in users are affected. Unfortunately, they don't provide a date and time stamp, so identifying the actual user is not possible. I can provide web server log extracts to whomever collects/analyzes such information (John O., sorry but you're bouncing my email - get rid of MAPS). --Mitch NetSide

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RE: Update: CSX train derailment
by Dave Stewart 21 Jul '01

21 Jul '01

At 12:50 PM 7/21/2001, up(a)3.am wrote: >Yes, I can see that; but I imagine you could handle this much the way >fiber is handled near the shoreline. Bury it a few feet under the mud or >sand. Keep in mind, too, that every crossing isn't going to be a nice, deep river... I can think of hundreds of cases (and so can you) where the crossing is over a shallow creek or fairly deep ravine (no water at all!) - yet difficult at best to trench it in... so cables, pipelines, etc, ride the bridge... Then your friendly local tropical storm comes along, drops plenty of water, and the bridge washes out. Now what? Reroute everything, of course. Or a tank truck catches fire and destroys the bridge (as happened in Atlanta not long ago - sure, it was I-285, and I don't think any cables rode that bridge), Obviously when routing cables, you have to deal with the cost/benefit ratio. What are the chances of any single point suffering catastrophic failure? How much will it cost to trench it in instead of riding a bridge/tunnel? You make a decision, then you deal with the consequences if you're wrong. More than worry about exactly what method is used for routing cables, I agree with building redundancy. Because no matter how you armor/protect your cables, something CAN occur that'll break through that protection... but if you have a backup in place, routed another way, with automatic failover, you barely notice. More importantly, your customers DON'T notice.

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Cogent Retraction/Correction
by Vincent J. Bono 21 Jul '01

21 Jul '01

Dear All, Two weeks after I posted my Cogent comments one of their staff contacted me and pointed out that my post on their using Williams ATM was incorrect. They apparently use Williams purchased fiber IRUs and their own DWDM to IP equipment. They also seem to be encountering delays with our orders due to the delays of their metro-fiber venders.. Okay. Be that as it may. The two week lag between my post to NANOG and their response was still a hell of a lot shorter than the time it takes for their tech staff to get back to us when we ask for order updates. IMHO: Be wary when using them and read the fine print re: order delivery. -vb

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Re: Update: CSX train derailment
by Sean Donelan 21 Jul '01

21 Jul '01

According to the Baltimore Sun, companies have laid 30,000 feet of emergency fiber to patch around the damage in the Howard Tunnel. "There was a ripple effect around the country with corporate networks due to this Baltimore disaster," said Frank Stanton, an executive with Lexent Inc., a New York-based company that repaired fiber-optic cable after the World Trade Center bombing in 1993. "Everybody thinks they have redundancy, but these type incidents show people there are huge issues. When you cross rivers and bridges, these choke points are the Achilles' heel." On the Washington DC to New York City fiber route, there seems to be at least one train derailment leading to significant network traffic re-routes every year.

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The Cidr Report
by CIDR Report 21 Jul '01

21 Jul '01

This is an auto-generated mail on Fri Jul 20 23:00:00 PDT 2001 It is not checked before it leaves my workstation. However, hopefully you will find this report interesting and will take the time to look through this to see if you can improve the amount of aggregation you perform. The report is split into sections: 0) General Status List the route table history for the last week, list any possibly bogus routes seen and give some status on ASes. 1) Gains by aggregating at the origin AS level This lists the "Top 30" players who if they decided to aggregate their announced classful prefixes at the origin AS level could make a significant difference in the reduction of the current size of the Internet routing table. This calculation does not take into account the inclusion of holes when forming an aggregate so it is possible even larger reduction should be possible. 2) Weekly Delta A summary of the last weeks changes in terms of withdrawn and added routes. Please note that this is only a snapshot but does give some indication of ASes participating in CIDR. Clearly, it is generally a good thing to see a large amont of withdrawls. 3) Interesting aggregates Interesting here means not an aggregate made as a set of classful routes. Thanks to GX Networks for giving me access to their routing tables once a day. Please send any comments about this report directly to CIDR Report <cidr-report(a)cisco.com>. Check http://www.employees.org/~tbates/cidr-report.html for a daily update of this report. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ CIDR REPORT for 20Jul01 0) General Status Table History ------------- Date Prefixes 130701 100848 140701 100609 150701 101337 160701 100485 170701 100311 180701 100565 190701 100739 200701 100950 Check http://www.employees.org/~tbates/cidr.plot.html for a plot of the table history. Possible Bogus Routes --------------------- AS Summary ---------- Number of ASes in routing system: 11241 Number of ASes announcing only one prefix: 6694 (3840 cidr, 2854 classful) Largest number of cidr routes: 865 announced by AS701 Largest number of classful routes: 1414 announced by AS701 1) Gains by aggregating at the origin AS level --- 20Jul01 --- ASnum NetsNow NetsCIDR NetGain % Gain Description AS1221 1347 1001 346 25.7% Telstra Pty Ltd AS701 1414 1199 215 15.2% UUNET Technologies, Inc. AS4293 391 280 111 28.4% Cable & Wireless USA AS6595 169 59 110 65.1% DoD Education Activity Networ AS6429 199 102 97 48.7% RdC Internet AS13999 104 8 96 92.3% Mega Cable S.A. de C.V. AS705 232 137 95 40.9% UUNET Technologies, Inc. AS7018 726 634 92 12.7% AT&T AS4755 211 121 90 42.7% VSNL India AS4151 161 79 82 50.9% USDA AS8013 298 217 81 27.2% PSINet Ltd. Canada AS577 246 173 73 29.7% Bell Canada AS724 230 158 72 31.3% DLA Systems Automation Center AS7046 313 249 64 20.4% UUNET Technologies, Inc. AS6471 122 58 64 52.5% ENTEL CHILE S.A. AS16473 121 58 63 52.1% Bell South AS4200 131 70 61 46.6% Apex Global Information Servi AS3464 148 91 57 38.5% Alabama SuperComputer Network AS16758 63 6 57 90.5% IKON Office Solutions AS1 569 513 56 9.8% BBN Planet AS1239 447 392 55 12.3% Sprint ICM-Inria AS6413 65 13 52 80.0% Southern Online Systems, Inc. AS3908 203 152 51 25.1% Supernet, Inc. AS17561 112 61 51 45.5% Internet Service West Austral AS852 213 163 50 23.5% Telus Advanced Communications AS4323 235 185 50 21.3% Time Warner Communications, I AS2149 320 270 50 15.6% Performance Systems, Inc. AS12302 83 33 50 60.2% MobiFon S.A. AS703 268 220 48 17.9% UUNET Technologies, Inc. AS5106 81 33 48 59.3% Ameritech Advanced Data Servi For the rest of the previous weeks gain information please see http://www.employees.org:80/~tbates/cidr-report.html 2) Weekly Delta Please see http://www.employees.org:80/~tbates/cidr-report.html for this part of the report 3) Interesting aggregates Please see http://www.employees.org:80/~tbates/cidr-report.html for this part of the report

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