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Of Fiber Cuts and RBOC Mega-mergers
by Frank Coluccio 09 Aug '05

09 Aug '05

All, Tracking the preceding discussion on fiber cuts has been especially interesting for me, with my focus being on the future implications of the pending RBOC mega-mergers now being finalized. The threat that I see resulting from the dual marriages of SBC/AT&T and VZ/MCI will be to drastically reduce the number of options that network planners in both enterprises and xSPs have at their disposal at this time for redundancy and diversity in the last mile access and metro transport layers. And higher than those, too, when integrations are completed. These mergers will result in the integration and optimization of routes and the closings of certain hubs and central offices in order to allow for the obligatory "synergies" and resulting savings to kick in. In the process of these efficiencies unfolding, I predict that business continuation planning and capacity planning processes, not to mention service ordering and engineering, will be disrupted to a fare-thee-well, where end users are concerned. The two question that I have are, How long will it take for those consolidations to kick in? and, What will become of the routes that are spun off or abandoned due to either business reasons surrounding synergies or court-ordered due to concentration of powers? While it's true that an enterprise or ISP cannot pin point where their services are routed, as was mentioned upstream in a number of places, it is at least possible to fairly accurately distinguish routes from disparate providers who are using different rights of way. This is especially true when those providers are 'facilities-based.' However, the same cannot be said for Type- 2 and -3 fiber (or even copper) loop providers who lease and resell fiber, such as Qwest riding piggy-back atop Above.net in an out-of-region metro offering. But thus far, for the builds that are owned and maintained by Verizon, SBC, MCI/MFS and AT&T/TCG, such differentiations are still possible. Not only will end users/secondary providers lose out on the number of physical route options that they have at their disposal, but once integration is completed users will find themselves riding over systems that are also managed and groomed in the upstream by a common set of NMS constructs, further reducing the level of robustness on yet higher levels in the stack. frank(a)coluccio.net ------ > Eight or nine people I had > talked to thought they had geographically distinct > ring loops that turned out to be on that one cable > when the second cut took it down hard. Perhaps now people will begin to take physical separacy seriously and write grooming protocols and SLAs into their contracts? Or was this type of service "good enough"? --Michael Dillon

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Re: Of Fiber Cuts and RBOC Mega-mergers
by Frank Coluccio 09 Aug '05

09 Aug '05

Gordon Cook asked: -- >>How many enterprises do you see Frank that may begin to understand they better build their own infrastructure. because perhaps placing all your infrastructures marbles in the equivalent of a new set of twin towers is not a good execution of your fiduciary responsibility to your shareholder...never mind the public at large?<< -- Assuming you're referring to a soup-to-nuts physical layer network, building one's own infrastructure isn't a panacea, and it is not even very often a doable proposition for organizations outside of the government and for companies outside of the Fortunes. Taken to the extreme, customer owned networks, if used as the sole source of transport, defies both the type of robustness that we seek - unless multiple networks per customer are built - and the very form of inter-working demanding of any-to-any end-to-end reach. So, unless it's a situation where great economies can be achieved in support of applications that are relatively local to (or resident solely within the borders of) an enterprise, maybe it's not the end all and be all that we sometimes make it out to be. For a University and Research Consortium, fine. For a forty-state branch banking network that must reach 42,347 end points, with most of those end points producing traffic for a single T1 or T3 line, or even a GbE line over an extended distance, it would appear on the surface "not," although each point solution requires its own evaluation. Volume discounts, the degree of diversity required and security issues all come into play, to name just three areas of concern. Rather, private builds are great for spot solutions, even very large ones, that are relatively constant between two or more points when those points are, likewise, constant and not constantly being relocated. But IMO they do little in the way of extending reach beyond the borders of the enterprise. For service providers, on the other hand, it's more of a financial consideration, assessing tradeoffs against perceived future pricing trends and traffic volumes. Again, to buy, rent or build is something that can only be determined at the time of need, and based on the particulars of the enterprise or service provider. That said, the situation I addressed initially highlights a case where the market had already begun taking care of some of the critical needs of diversity and redundancy for the universe of North American (or at least US) users, which are now about to be trashed in order to satisfy the goals of two corporate entities. Does this make any sense? Of course not. But viewed against the backdrop of this past week's FCC releases, the trend, despite how irrational and ludicrous it may appear, is ringing clear as day. And so it goes ... --- Frank A. Coluccio DTI Consulting Inc. 347-526-6788 Mobile frank(a)fttx.org ---------- On Mon Aug 8 16:17 , Gordon Cook sent: So although we have the technology to build networks controlled at the edge and networks that are less subject to failure, the old business models that we cant seem to break out of insist that we remonopolize walled garden telephone monopolies. Why? Because we imagine them to have wondrous new capabilities of economy of scale. We concentrate the fiber and the switching centers into evermore centralized potential points of failure. We rob ourselves of redundancy. As with the cisco router monoculture in our backbones which god help us if it ever failed, we are now building a potential concentration of fiber. Higher and potentially more fragile than the twin towers. How sad. How can we gain some understanding of other ways to look at infrastructure? This is terribly short sighted. How many enterprises do you see Frank that may begin to understand they better build their own infrastructure. because perhaps placing all your infrastructures marbles in the equivalent of a new set of twin towers is not a good execution of your fiduciary responsibility to your shareholder...never mind the public at large? ============================================================= The COOK Report on Internet Protocol, 431 Greenway Ave, Ewing, NJ 08618 USA 609 882-2572 (PSTN) 415 651-4147 (Lingo) cook(a)cookreport.com Subscription info: http://cookreport.com/subscriptions.shtml New report: Where is New Wealth Created? Center or Edge? at: http://cookreport.com/14.07.shtml ============================================================= On Aug 8, 2005, at 1:51 PM, Frank Coluccio wrote: > > All, > > Tracking the preceding discussion on fiber cuts has been especially > interesting for me, with my focus being on the future implications of > the pending RBOC mega-mergers now being finalized. The threat that > I see resulting from the dual marriages of SBC/AT&T and VZ/MCI will be > to drastically reduce the number of options that network planners in > both enterprises and xSPs have at their disposal at this time for > redundancy and diversity in the last mile access and metro transport > layers. And higher than those, too, when integrations are completed. > > These mergers will result in the integration and optimization of > routes and the closings of certain hubs and central offices in > order to > allow for the obligatory "synergies" and resulting savings to kick in.. > In the process of these efficiencies unfolding, I predict that > business > continuation planning and capacity planning processes, not to mention > service ordering and engineering, will be disrupted to a fare-thee- > well, > where end users are concerned. The two question that I have are, How > long will it take for those consolidations to kick in? and, What will > become of the routes that are spun off or abandoned due to either > business reasons surrounding synergies or court-ordered due to > concentration of powers? > > While it's true that an enterprise or ISP cannot pin point where their > services are routed, as was mentioned upstream in a number of > places, it > is at least possible to fairly accurately distinguish routes from > disparate providers who are using different rights of way. This is > especially true when those providers are 'facilities-based.' However, > the same cannot be said for Type- 2 and -3 fiber (or even copper) loop > providers who lease and resell fiber, such as Qwest riding piggy-back > atop Above.net in an out-of-region metro offering. > > But thus far, for the builds that are owned and maintained by Verizon, > SBC, MCI/MFS and AT&T/TCG, such differentiations are still possible. > > Not only will end users/secondary providers lose out on the number of > physical route options that they have at their disposal, but once > integration is completed users will find themselves riding over > systems > that are also managed and groomed in the upstream by a common set > of NMS > constructs, further reducing the level of robustness on yet higher > levels in the stack. > > frank(a)coluccio.net > ------ > > >> Eight or nine people I had >> talked to thought they had geographically distinct >> ring loops that turned out to be on that one cable >> when the second cut took it down hard. >> > > Perhaps now people will begin to take physical separacy > seriously and write grooming protocols and SLAs into > their contracts? > > Or was this type of service "good enough"? > > --Michael Dillon > > > > Frank A. Coluccio DTI Consulting Inc. 212-587-8150 Office 347-526-6788 Mobile

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FCC Bans VoIP Services Blocking
by Fergie (Paul Ferguson) 08 Aug '05

08 Aug '05

Via Red Herring: [snip] While much of the reaction to Fridays U.S. Federal Communications Commission ruling has been focused on ISPs, a policy statement issued as part of the commissions deregulation of DSL services could add much-needed legal protection for VoIP carriers such as Vonage and Skype. The FCC issued a statement that it does not want the newly freed DSL providers and cable operators to use their total control of their networks to interfere with the access rights of direct competitors such as VoIP providers. A policy statement does not have the legal teeth of a rule, but it does put telecommunications carriers and cable operators on notice that there are still aspects of broadband services delivery in which the FCC reserves the right to meddle. "We need a watchful eye to ensure that network providers do not become Internet gatekeepers, with the ability to dictate who can use the Internet and for what purpose," said Michael J. Copps, one of two democrats on the FCC panel. "Consumers do not want to be told that they cannot use their DSL line for VoIP, for streaming video, to access a particular news web site, or to play on a particular companys game machine." [snip] http://www.redherring.com/article.aspx?a=13071 - ferg -- "Fergie", a.k.a. Paul Ferguson Engineering Architecture for the Internet fergdawg(a)netzero.net or fergdawg(a)sbcglobal.net ferg's tech blog: http://fergdawg.blogspot.com/

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/8 end user assignment?
by Stephen J. Wilcox 08 Aug '05

08 Aug '05

Ok, back up a second.... 126/8 Jan 05 APNIC (whois.apnic.net) inetnum: 126.0.0.0 - 126.255.255.255 netname: BBTEC descr: Japan Nation-wide Network of Softbank BB Corp. status: ALLOCATED PORTABLE changed: hm-changed(a)apnic.net 20050208 i thought the decade of giving class A's to large corporates had long since passed.. we've got some major network rollout coming up, i need an extra 16 million IPs, so can i get one? wtf? Steve

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Re: fcc ruling on dsl providers' access to infrastructure
by Scott McGrath 08 Aug '05

08 Aug '05

I believe it is called facism. A big bald Italian mentioned something about trains running on time. Randy Bush wrote: > From: Randy Bush <randy(a)psg.com> > Date: Sun, 7 Aug 2005 11:22:23 -1000 > To: "Christopher L. Morrow" <christopher.morrow(a)mci.com> > Subject: Re: fcc ruling on dsl providers' access to infrastructure > > >>>>> Yes there is a major concern that the government has >>>>> just ellminated every isp that is currently permitted >>>>> to use another carriers dsl lines to provide >>>>> service's. >>>> will the ilec's start offering competitive services (not bw, >>>> but non-dynamic ips or small blocks to end-users?) >>> if their competition has been eliminated by fcc ruling, what >>> does 'competitive' pricing mean? >> that which is set by the gov't rulings? :) > > and, for this morning's pop quiz, what is the classic term for an > economy of private ownership and government control? > > randy

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FCC Issues Rule Allowing FBI to Dictate Wiretap-Friendly Design for In ternet Services
by Fergie (Paul Ferguson) 08 Aug '05

08 Aug '05

Via the EFF website. [snip] Today the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issued a release announcing its new rule expanding the reach of the Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act (CALEA). The ruling is a reinterpretation of the scope of CALEA and will force Internet broadband providers and certain voice-over-IP (VoIP) providers to build backdoors into their networks that make it easier for law enforcement to wiretap them. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has argued against this expansion of CALEA in several rounds of comments to the FCC on its proposed rule. CALEA, a law passed in the early 1990s, mandated that all telephone providers build tappability into their networks, but expressly ruled out information services like broadband. Under the new ruling from the FCC, this tappability now extends to Internet broadband providers as well. Practically, what this means is that the government will be asking broadband providers - as well as companies that manufacture devices used for broadband communications to build insecure backdoors into their networks, imperiling the privacy and security of citizens on the Internet. It also hobbles technical innovation by forcing companies involved in broadband to redesign their products to meet government requirements. "Expanding CALEA to the Internet is contrary to the statute and is a fundamentally flawed public policy," said Kurt Opsahl, EFF staff attorney. "This misguided tech mandate endangers the privacy of innocent people, stifles innovation and risks the functionality of the Internet as a forum for free and open expression." [snip] http://www.eff.org/news/archives/2005_08.php#003876 - ferg -- "Fergie", a.k.a. Paul Ferguson Engineering Architecture for the Internet fergdawg(a)netzero.net or fergdawg(a)sbcglobal.net ferg's tech blog: http://fergdawg.blogspot.com/

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Re: Fiber cut in SJ
by George William Herbert 08 Aug '05

08 Aug '05

>> So... is mail not getting in/out from Nanog right now, >> or is the fairly major fiber cut in San Jose not newsworthy >> on the operational list anymore....? > >I'm gonna guess that people were too distracted with "Oh crap, where'd >the internet go?" I couldn't get to outside email from inside for a while. >So since there's the question, for those not in the know, the word is >that there was a cut through half of a 1000 strand cable owned by >Level3, affecting 502 fibers. > >It's my understanding that they've been splicing since 23:45 GMT and >that they're moving through the mass of fibers at an impressive rate. I have it on good authority (fiber provider, around 5:30 pm pst) that the outage happened in two phases. First, an electrical contractor backhoed a large fiber link in downtown San Jose (address deleted due to security concerns) this morning, causing moderate damage. Initial repair efforts apparently went nowhere; there wasn't enough cable and trench space to work with. Around 2pm PST the repair lead onsite had the remaining cable sliced at manhole access points a couple of hundred meters each direction from the original cut, to give them clean surfaces and workspace for the splice. Which of course took out the other hundreds of pairs which had survived the initial backhoe. We certainly didn't get any warning that was going to happen, and neither did anyone else we were able to talk to over the course of the afternoon. I also understand from a couple of fiber providers that an unusually large amount of other fiber had been groomed onto that one cable over the last few years of consolidations. Eight or nine people I had talked to thought they had geographically distinct ring loops that turned out to be on that one cable when the second cut took it down hard. -george william herbert gherbert(a)retro.com

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Re: /8 end user assignment?
by Sabri Berisha 08 Aug '05

08 Aug '05

On Fri, Aug 05, 2005 at 02:04:21PM -0700, Peter Boothe wrote: > On Fri, 5 Aug 2005, Sabri Berisha wrote: Hi Peter, > Everything can break. We want to know what will break less. > > http://soy.dyndns.org/~peter/projects/research/anycast/nanog/ > So, since Daniel Karrenberg showed that there was at least a 1% difference > between anycast and unicast reliability, and we showed that the median AS > switches root clusters every 3 hours, anycast is still a net win for the > median AS, even with TCP queries, and is probably a net win for everyone > except the people who have severe extant route flapping issues. So what I understand from your slides is basically that you acknowledge the fact that it is theoretically possible for the setup to cause temporary loss of connectivity (very minor packetloss) which may result in DNS queries to timeout, but that the impact of such an event has no real-life damage. I thought that it would be virtually impossible to get this actually working outside of a lab-environment due to continuous route-changes on the net. I stand corrected. -- Sabri Berisha, Juniper Certified - JNCIA #747 | Cisco Certified - CCNA email: sabri(a)cluecentral.net | cell: +31 6 19890416 http://www.cluecentral.net/ | http://www.virt-ix.net/

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RE: FCC Issues Rule Allowing FBI to Dictate Wiretap-Friendly Design for In ternet Services
by Hannigan, Martin 08 Aug '05

08 Aug '05

> > That is IF you even get an order. The brunt of the work is > > at the tier1's. This is like DDOS. LEC's have to do it, but > > they frequently misinterpret the requirements and scale and > > end up spending money they never had to. Misinterpretation is > > a big problem for CALEA, technically speaking. > > First time anyone has every accused tier 1's of spending > money they didn't > need too. Let me lower the reading comprehension level for you. I said that tier1's bear the brunt of the orders, and insinuated that tier2's get less orders. They do. Many midwest/rural CLEC's get NO orders. They must still be compliant. > > Folks may find it useful to review [ SNIP ] The place to get the authoritative word is direct from the AskCALEA folks here: http://www.askcalea.net/ - and of course you can discuss with your telecom lawyers. You may be confusing terminology though, which is understandable. I can't find a government official calling defining the applicability of the law a "wish list" so I'll leave that to the gentle readers to determine. -M<

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Re: Cisco mulls buying Nokia?
by Fergie (Paul Ferguson) 07 Aug '05

07 Aug '05

Voice over WiFi? - ferg -- Rachael Treu Gomes <rara(a)navigo.com> wrote: Strange... Explicit reference to how this would enable Cisco to gain purchase into the wireless space, but no mention of the impact on the popularity of Nokia platforms with a competing firewall vendor, Check Point. Any thoughts on VoIP? ymmv, --ra -- rachael treu gomes rara(a)navigo.com ..quis custodiet ipsos custodes?.. (this email has been brought to you by the letters 'v' and 'i'.)

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