April 2006 - Test - lists.nanog.org

Re: Open Letter to D-Link about their NTP vandalism
by Brian Dickson 12 Apr '06

12 Apr '06

Two concrete technical suggestions to mitigate the volunteered NTP server's usage issues at the DIX: (1) Have someone else anycast the DIX block, and NAT the incoming NTP requests to another NTP stratum-1 server (eg pool address(es)). Or a much better idea: (2) Renumber into a new /24, which is announced only at the DIX with no-export, so that only DIX members are able to reach the server - as was the intended usage of this NTP server in the first place. (The announcment can be made by anyone at the DIX, it is not strictly necessary that the NTP server be the announcer of the /24. And in fact, it need not be a /24, as the server should be the only occupant of the block - but it should not be covered by any globally visible aggregate, at least not one contiguous to the connectivity at the DIX.) As to the liability issue, it is easy enough to envision that someone, somewhere, is relying on time results from NTP for a life-or-death application, like a medical device, and is innocently an impacted third party in this. Sending bad NTP values could in theory be responsible for killing someone's scratch monkey... -- Brian Dickson Email: briand(a)chateau-briand.net http://www.chateau-briand.net Tel : +1 647 234 7282

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Re: well-known NTP?
by Brandon Butterworth 11 Apr '06

11 Apr '06

> [I just happened to see this, browsing at high speed, so please > forgive me, if I'm out of context.] You did miss the point (if there is one still) > a rouge anycast NTP server could create > substantial amounts of harm from security and other standpoints by > giving out incorrect time. It doesn't matter, if people cared they'd use something better. This is about people configuring and forgetting where they don't really care (and it's probably not needed or used anyway). Some have discussed returning bogus data to these unwanted queries, seems no different to an anycast gone bad. At least an anycast ntp is there because someone wants people to use it, if it goes bad the upstreams can stop accepting the announcement. Far easier than updating the firmware on thousands of boxes to stop querying someone returning bad data because they don't want their service used any more (which they could just change address on and stop worrying about a few packets that are below most ISPs noise). brandon

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RE: XO Peering
by Lasher, Donn 11 Apr '06

11 Apr '06

>Does anyone else miss the good old days when nanog readers/attendees knew why pinging >the routers you saw in a traceroute directly was not an accurate measurement of anything? I miss the succinct, polite answers even more.... -donn

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XO Peering
by Berkman, Scott 11 Apr '06

11 Apr '06

Does anyone know what is going on with XO and their peering? My XO circuit is taking weird paths to other carriers, and internethealthreport.com shows elevated latency on all of their links. XO won't tell me anything. This also seems to be affecting US LEC, but I think US LEC buys transit from XO. Appreciate any help, -Scott ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------ Scott Berkman CCNP 404-975-0097 Network Engineer scott.berkman(a)reignmaker.net

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Evaluating bandwidth quality
by Yonathan 11 Apr '06

11 Apr '06

Hi, When trying to decide between 2 bandwidth providers: is there is a way to evaluate their bandwidth quality. Are there comparison papers or tools one can use? I was in fact thinking about comparing Globix and Internap. Thanks, Yon

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LightPath? off list
by David Schreiber 11 Apr '06

11 Apr '06

Hi all, I am considering using LightPath's Metro Ethernet service. Does anyone have any general feedback, if so you can respond off list? Regards, David Schreiber Microwave Satellite Technologies, Inc Chek67(a)gmail.com

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Covad issues?
by Drew Linsalata 10 Apr '06

10 Apr '06

Apologies for bringing this to the list, but Covad is basically a brick wall telephone and e-mail wise right now. Does anyone know of any Covad network issues, especially in the northeast US, that might be impacting customer connectivity? -- Drew Linsalata The Gotham Bus Company, Inc. Dedicated Servers and Colocation Solutions Long Island, New York http://www.gothambus.com

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Open Letter to D-Link about their NTP vandalism
by Etaoin Shrdlu 10 Apr '06

10 Apr '06

Well, this is at least marginally on topic, and I think it deserves a wider audience. It is written by Poul-Henning Kamp (the affected party). Please read it. http://people.freebsd.org/~phk/dlink/ It ends with the following: Didn't something like this happen before? Yes, D-Link is not the first vendor to make a hash of the NTP protocol. Some years back NetGear products blasted University of Wisconsin off the net. I have repeatedly pointed D-Link's lawyer at this case. Fortunately, in my case it is not that bad. The NetGear incident caused the NTP protocol designers to add a "kiss of death" option to the Latest (S)NTP standard but D-Links devices does not respect that option. I have tried. -- "You can't have in a democracy various groups with arms - you have to have the state with a monopoly on power," Condoleeza Rice, the US secretary of state, said at the end of her two-day visit to Baghdad yesterday. ...No Comment

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New BGP noise analysis
by Stephan Millet 09 Apr '06

09 Apr '06

All, I hope this isn't too off topic for you, however I have just come across a new BGP analysis page (more for the fine people at potaroo.net) which provides a breakdown of the noisiest (in BGP terms) prefixes and AS's. This seems to be a live analysis of some work presented on at the recent APRICOT/APNIC conference in Perth. http://bgpupdates.potaroo.net Hope this provides some valuable info to you. Cheers Stephan Millet Telstra Internet Direct

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RE: Open Letter to D-Link about their NTP vandalism
by David Hubbard 08 Apr '06

08 Apr '06

From: Rubens Kuhl Jr. > > > > It still would require him to answer the DNS requests. Only > way to addres that is everybody outside DIX declare > gps.dix.de as www.dlink.com in their resolvers. > How about serve back bogus NTP data to non-BIX customer prefixes? Maybe if people's computers start setting themselves to the year 2004 D-Link will do something. :-) Dave

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