March 2006 - Test - lists.nanog.org

Last message i'll post for awhile I promise :-) (Need a Time Warner Cable NOC person)
by Drew Weaver 09 Mar '06

09 Mar '06

Are there any TWC NOC people on list? Thanks, Drew

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Presumed RF Interference
by Jon R. Kibler 08 Mar '06

08 Mar '06

Greetings: We have a client site that is driving us nuts! We have had more equipment failure issues at that one location than at all other locations we manage combined. We have come to the conclusion that there is some type of RF interference occurring that is causing these failures, but are at a loss how to prove that and track down the source. This client site is a new facility. Incoming power is lightning protected by the power company at the meter, and each breaker panel has surge suppression breakers. Incoming telco lines are lightning and surge protected by the telco at the demarc. The building has excellent grounding. All telephone, network, and computer equipment are on UPSes. All network infrastructure is certified CAT6. We have had the power company monitor line quality and they see no blips that would explain out observed problems. The local telco consistently claims the problem is on the customer side of the demarc -- even when it effects telco equipment. The site has channelized T1 voice, an ATM encapsulated FR WAN, and ADSL local Internet access. We have this identical setup for this client at about a dozen other locations, and none have any problems. The most frequent observed problem is the ADSL line dropping due to excessive noise. The problem seems to occur most at about 0130, 0730, 1530, and 2230 local time -- but not every day and not always at those times (about 20 to 25 failures per week). ADSL failures can last from 5 minutes to hours. We get frequent voice and FR circuits failures -- but of shorter duration (usually less than 5 minutes) and far less frequently (2 or 3 times a week). The voice and FR failures appear to occur concurrently (physically separate circuits), but not at the same time as the ADSL failure. I should also add that there never appears to be audible noise on the lines, even during failures. Equipment failures is what really leads to the conclusion this is probably an RF issue. Among the stuff we have had fail are: 3 DSL routers (cisco 8x7) 1 edge router (cisco 28xx) 1 FR router (cisco 36xx) 1 patch panel 1 telco smart jack (ATM/FR circuit) 1 PBX T1 card 1 patch panel (all jacks went open on the same pair) 6+ NICs I should add that the failures started before the building was occupied -- while we were still testing the basic infrastructure. In fact, we have observed problems from day one of the networks being turned on by the telcos. I should also add some other points: -- We have observed failures when the building had zero power, except for the UPS battery power in the server room, so we don't think that we are getting power spikes from anything within the building. -- The building only operates 0600 to 1800, so many failures are occurring after hours. -- There are no RF sources in the building. -- We are not near an airport. -- The building is steel framed and sided -- and a pretty good RF shield -- cell phone reception goes from 5 of 5 bars to 1 or 2 bars as soon as you walk in the door. Given what I have described, would you think this is an RF interference problem? RF problem or not, how would you track down this problem? We are to the point of bringing in a consulting EE, but I am not sure that most would be equipped to solve this problem; so, what should we look for in a potential consulting engineer? Apologizes for the dissertation! Any and all helpful suggestions welcome. Thanks! Jon Kibler -- Jon R. Kibler Chief Technical Officer A.S.E.T., Inc. Charleston, SC USA (843) 849-8214 ================================================== Filtered by: TRUSTEM.COM's Email Filtering Service http://www.trustem.com/ No Spam. No Viruses. Just Good Clean Email.

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IP Transit Questions.
by Robert Sherrard 08 Mar '06

08 Mar '06

My company is relativity new to the IP transit world... we've been a "collocated" customer for some time; however the idea of buying IP transit is new to us. We're looking at the possibility getting ourselves on a fiber local loop (Onfiber), which heads over towards the Westin Building here in Seattle. My question is, and I realize pricing points will vary between folks... what could I expect to buy for IP transit once I'm in the Westin Building. For starters we're looking at anywhere from 10-20 Megs of IP transit. Thanks in advance... Rob

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Re: Honest Cogent opinions without rhetoric.
by Charles Gucker 08 Mar '06

08 Mar '06

On Wed, Mar 08, 2006 at 12:10:35PM -0500, Omachonu Ogali wrote: > I have the need to de-pref my routes to Level3, to be of equal value as the > routes they receive from their peers, but they don't offer a community for > that. But wow, I can see that this route originated from Tustin, CA! Hrm, this seems very straight forward to me: >From http://www.onesc.net/communities/as3356 customer traffic engineering communities - LocalPref -------------------------------------------------------- 3356:70 - set local preference to 70 3356:80 - set local preference to 80 3356:90 - set local preference to 90 I believe peering routes are set to a local preference of 70 within L3, but I could be mistaken. Would be best to ask the TCAM group what a peer's LP is set to by default. > Everyone's traffic engineering needs are different. BGP communities were > created because one size doesn't fit all. But that doesn't mean that you > will find the same communities (that are of use to you) on a different > provider. Agreed, but you also have to understand that some networks have more or less flexiblity with their peers. The ones who have more "authority" (or believe they do) will publically offer greater control, while those with less "authority" may decide to limit their public statements. The other train of thought I've seen with a number of providers is.. The more communities they support, the more questions/misconfiguration they will run into as a result. I even know a few providers who refuse to give out their community guides without proving your technical knowledge first. charles

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RE: Honest Cogent opinions without rhetoric.
by David Hubbard 08 Mar '06

08 Mar '06

From: Omachonu Ogali [mailto:oogali@pantherexpress.net] > > I have the need to de-pref my routes to Level3, to be of > equal value as the routes they receive from their peers, > but they don't offer a community for that. But wow, I can > see that this route originated from Tustin, CA! I've found them pretty responsive to unusual requests, maybe they'd find a way to do that if you ask them; or go through your sales rep if the support guys aren't being helpful. Or maybe you can alter the preferences your providers that peer with them announce for you. Besides them, we've also had good help for unusual things from Global Crossing, who we no longer use for reasons other than dissatisfaction, and Time Warner Telecom. Have not yet had a need to make unusual requests of our other providers so I can't say how they'd deal with it. > Everyone's traffic engineering needs are different. BGP Yes, that's why the more a provider offers, the better. I'd rather have more than I need than not having what I currently need; my only point was that Cogent's community support is more lacking than the others I have used and BGP communities are often something that is not considered until the link is up or until the first problem where they would come in handy is encountered. > P.S. You have transit, not peering. Thank you, an egregious typo on my part. David

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Sales contact at MCI/UUNET?
by Drew Weaver 08 Mar '06

08 Mar '06

I realize this is most likely off topic and is likely to get me flamed but I am in desperate need of the contact information for someone in sales or management at MCI/UUNET. We have been paying a reseller for a UUNET circuit for about 6 months and I guess he hasn't been paying MCI/UUNET for this circuit and he's telling us they're about to disconnect circuit and this would be absolutely catastrophic to us right now; so if anyone has the contact information of anyone that would be in a position to assist us in transitioning this circuit or making arrangements to get something done; we would be forever in your gratitude. Thanks, -Drew

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RE: Honest Cogent opinions without rhetoric.
by David Hubbard 08 Mar '06

08 Mar '06

From: Charles Gucker > > > > Depends on if you like to do traffic engineering; Cogent's > > BGP community support, consisting of a whole three things you > > can set (two if you only have a single connection to them), > > makes that rather difficult. > > Umm, where did you get that mis-information from? The last > communitiy guide I've seen from them has quite a bit more than two ;p > > For a quick reference: > http://www.onesc.net/communities/as174/as174.pdf > > charles I was meaning more along the lines of types of things you can control. You have limited route export control, and even more limited path prepend control; that's two. :-) Or if you're multi-homed to them, you can set local pref too. Alternatively, I'll just use Level 3 as an example because we have peering with both of them as well as three others. Level 3 lets us control local pref, prepend to specific remote AS numbers (incredibly useful and something everyone should insist on from their providers), prepend to EU peers, all the same export controls and then some, announce to specific AS, do not announce to specific AS. On the incoming side, where Cogent has tags for all of four whole groups (NA non-customer, NA customer, EU non-customer, EU customer), Level 3 has tags for the same plus peering points, cities, countries, regions, MEDs ignored, MEDs accepted, internal, etc.. We like having our connectivity to Cogent because we like to have fast delivery of our customers' content to Cogent's customers, not because of the price. On more than one occasion we have had issues where the only solution to a problem of our customers accessing us coming through a remote peer of Cogent's who had a problem, and a preference for the Cogent route, was to turn down our session with them until that remote peer resolved their issue; there's no other way to make them prefer a different route, including with the help, or lack thereof, of Cogent's NOC. David

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RE: Honest Cogent opinions without rhetoric.
by David Hubbard 08 Mar '06

08 Mar '06

From: alex(a)pilosoft.com > > On Wed, 8 Mar 2006, Martin Hannigan wrote: > > > > > We have heard a lot of negatives about them, about their > > pricing model, about their network, about de-peering with > > Level 3, etc. What we really need is actual information. > > > Much of the negatives is from jaded competitors who don't > want to fairly compete. Other than that, the answer is 'it depends'. Depends on if you like to do traffic engineering; Cogent's BGP community support, consisting of a whole three things you can set (two if you only have a single connection to them), makes that rather difficult. David

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Re: Honest Cogent opinions without rhetoric.
by Martin Hannigan 08 Mar '06

08 Mar '06

At 01:56 AM 3/8/2006, alex(a)pilosoft.com wrote: >On Wed, 8 Mar 2006, Martin Hannigan wrote: > > > > I am looking for user experiences for people who have > > > purchased > > >transit from cogent in the 300Mbps or up range as far as performance, > > >stability, and any other measurable metric of quality you can come up > > >with. > > > > > > We have heard a lot of negatives about them, about their > > >pricing model, about their network, about de-peering with Level 3, etc. > > >What we really need is actual information. >Much of the negatives is from jaded competitors who don't want to fairly >compete. Other than that, the answer is 'it depends'. > >[ SNIP ] >(from Marty) > > From a global perspective[1], the top 12 (I stopped at Cogent since you > > are asking about them) service providers whose customers and peering > > partners reach the largest number of networks are listed below. You can > > make some fairly interesting assumptions on your own: ><snip> > >This gotta be the most meaningless metric ever. What does "reach" >mean? More ASNs seen behind given network? What does it tell, precisely? >There are ASNs which have significant chunks of intarweb (say, AS1668) >behind them, while AS721 is not likely to matter in a grand scheme of >things, even though all .mil installations are behind it. > >Note that many Cogent customers, while using Cogent for outbound, prefer >not to announce any routes to Cogent for political reasons (or prepend or >depref their routes). So, that metric won't be exactly helpful. 721 is included because it's on the list. In some markets Cogent is a leader and they cause price pressure. There are metro areas that Cogent is number two verses big tier 1. You ought to be getting good deals from the tier1 in that market as you manage your capacity. -M< -- Martin Hannigan (c) 617-388-2663 Renesys Corporation (w) 617-395-8574 Member of Technical Staff Network Operations hannigan(a)renesys.com

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Italy orders ISPs to block sites
by Rodney Joffe 08 Mar '06

08 Mar '06

It appears that Italy has ordered Italian ISPs to block access to a number of Internet Gambling sites. It would be interesting to see how the Italian ISPs are handling this, what with dynamic DNS and all that... From Monsters and Critics.com Tech News Italy bans unauthorised online gambling sites By DPA Mar 3, 2006, 19:00 GMT Rome - Italy has become the first European nation to outlaw scores of unauthorised gambling sites that are available on the Internet. Italy\'s Economy Ministry has published a list of more than 600 offshore gaming sites that are in the process of being made unavailable to Italian internet users. The list includes popular gambling sites such as 888.com, which is based in the Caribbean island of Antigua and which describes itself as \'the world\'s No. 1 online casino & poker room.\' A spokesperson for Italy\'s State Monopolies told Deutsche Presse- Agentur dpa on Friday that Italian police were currently moving to prevent Italian internet providers from allowing connections to the banned sites. Internet providers that fail to comply face fines of up to 180,000 euros (216,000 dollars). ... More available at http://tech.monstersandcritics.com/news/ article_1134456.php

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