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Technical Contact and Network Solutions (now Verisign)
by Spencer.Wood＠dot.state.oh.us 24 May '02

24 May '02

Good Morning: I was wondering, does anyone have a technical contact over at Verisign? We have a couple of domain names that we are trying to change the information on, and we are having technical problems changing the information (ie: which domain servers it should point to). I've called it into Verisign technical support earlier in the week, and they said "We have to send this over to engineering", and well, that's the last I've heard of it......everytime I call Verisign customer support, I get the same line "It's been sent over to engineering, and we can't find the status". I was hoping that someone might have a contact over a Verisign Engineering that could help us out... Thanks Spencer ************************************************************ Spencer Wood, Network Manager Ohio Department Of Transportation 1320 Arthur E. Adams Drive Columbus, Ohio 43221 E-Mail: Spencer.Wood(a)dot.state.oh.us Phone: 614.644.5422/Fax: 614.887.4021/Pager: 866.591.9954 *************************************************************

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Re: operational: icmp echo out of control?
by Amgad Zeitoun 24 May '02

24 May '02

> Path latency doesn't change much, you can determine > this with very few probes. > . . . . > Much like web spidering, some simple common sense can help keep probes > from becoming a hassle: > . . . . > * Consider what is the smallest unit of "distinct network topology" you > need to map. A very reasonable number would be a /24. We have been studying these issues as part of the IDMaps project and have two reports quantifying our results. If interested, you can download our papers from: http://idmaps.eecs.umich.edu/papers/rtt.ps.gz http://idmaps.eecs.umich.edu/papers/ap.pdf Cheers, Amgad

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Re: Routers vs. PC's for routing - was list problems?
by Dave Israel 24 May '02

24 May '02

Then why ot boot from a CD-ROM? Sure, it moves, but only for the few minutes it takes to boot. Then it spins down and sits idle for the n days/weeks/months until the next reboot. It would probably last as long as the solid state drive, and would be cheaper. The big problem here, of course, is software upgrades. Personally, I'd just use a hard drive and initrd (under linux) and leave the hd controller out of the kernel. When it comes time to upgrade, reboot to an alternate kernel that has the hd support code. But that's more of a discussion for a Linux list than here. -Dave On 5/23/2002 at 18:01:03 -0400, Steven J. Sobol said: > > On Thu, 23 May 2002, E.B. Dreger wrote: > > > SJS> a basic question, but the only EIDE mass-storage devices > > SJS> I've used are more traditional drives. > > > > Why not partition wisely, then mount the desired partition as > > read-only? Or I guess one _could_ mount each partition as RO... > > > > But why? > > The box I want to build is passing packets between the rest of my network > (and the public Internet) and one server that will hold sensitive data. > It'll be a Linux box with the TCP/IP stack running in bridged mode, with > two ethernet adapters installed. The box just needs to boot up and run. It > doesn't need to log anything. > > -- > Steve Sobol, CTO (Server Guru, Network Janitor and Head Geek) > JustThe.net LLC, Mentor On The Lake, OH 888.480.4NET http://JustThe.net > "In a 32-bit world, you're a 2-bit user/You've got your own newsgroup: > alt.total.loser" - "Weird Al" Yankovic, "It's All About the Pentiums" > > > -- Dave Israel Senior Manager, IP Backbone Engineering

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Re: Routers vs. PC's for routing - was list problems?
by Vinny Abello 24 May '02

24 May '02

At 02:20 PM 5/23/2002 -0400, you wrote: >Vinny Abello wrote: > > > > I would have to say for any Linux/BSD platform to be a viable > > routing solution, you have to eliminate all moving parts or as much > > as possible, ie. no hard drives because hard drives will fail. Not > > much you can do about the cooling fans in various parts of the > > machine though which routers also tend to have. Solid state > > storage would be the way to go as far as what the OS is installed > > on. You have to have something to imitate flash on the common > > router. Otherwise, if you can get the functionality out of a PC, > > I say go for it! The processing power of a modern PC is far beyond > > any router I can think of. I suppose it would just be a matter of > > how efficient your kernel, TCP/IP stack and routing daemon would > > be at that point. :) > >I've several comments here. > >First off, you're right about moving parts generally being a bad thing. >However, it is not always necessary to eliminate the hard drive. Two >drives in a RAID-0 configuration may be reliable enough. Especially if >the failure of a single drive sets off sufficient alarms so that it can >quickly be hot-swapped for a new drive. I'm assuming you meant RAID-1. In RAID-0 if you 'swapped' any drive all your striped data is toast. ;) >The real problem with using PCs is bandwidth and hardware reliability. > >PCs generally don't have many hot-swappable parts. You can get hot-swap >hard drive assemblies without too much work, and redundant power >supplies can be purchased. A motherboard that allows hot-swapping of >PCI cards (usually by having multiple busses and a mechanism to turn >them off individually) is very rare. You can get dual-CPU motherboards, >but not with the processors being hot swappable. And I don't know if >any will allow the system to transparently fail over from one CPU to >another, should the primary fail. I agree with you on that. Hot swapability for various interfaces is something routers obviously have over PC's. >Then there's the issue of the PCI bus. Standard PCI (32-bit 33MHz) has >a theoretical maximum bandwidth of about 1Gbit/s. But you can never use >all of a PCI bus's bandwidth, so actual limits will be less than this. True... unless going for 64 bit PCI at 66MHz... still it's obvious that routers are designed for one simple purpose and generally have larger backplanes to handle that. >When you're doing software routing, every packet must cross the bus >twice - once for the receive and once for the send. So your standard >PCI bus (if used for nothing but packets) has a top speed of 500Mbit/s. >Which is less than three ports of full-duplex fast Ethernet at line >rate. Multiple busses and/or 64-bit 66MHz PCI can increase this limit, >but now you're talking about much more expensive motherboards. > >You can dramatically improve throughput if you can get line cards that >have on-board forwarding chips. If cards can forward packets between >each other without getting the CPU involved, then packets can cross the >PCI bus only once. But these kinds of line cards are not cheap, if they >can be found at all. And you will need some way of downloading your >kernel routing table into the cards, which may require some serious OS >hacking. > >In other words, a PC equipped to be as reliable and capable as a decent >router will likely end up costing as much as a router. And the reason >has nothing to do with the CPU speed or the operating system. I agree a router is probably more efficient in just routing packets, but in complex filtering or traffic manipulation/packet sniffing, a PC might have the edge. :) Don't get me wrong. I would never use a PC for a router, just as I wouldn't try to run my workstation as a 7206. ;) It's all just hypothesizing. Vinny Abello Network Engineer Server Management vinny(a)tellurian.com (973)300-9211 x 125 (973)940-6125 (Direct) Tellurian Networks - The Ultimate Internet Connection http://www.tellurian.com (888)TELLURIAN

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Re: Routers vs. PC's for routing - was list problems?
by Vinny Abello 23 May '02

23 May '02

At 04:17 PM 5/23/2002 -0400, you wrote: > > I agree with you on that. Hot swapability for various interfaces is > > something routers obviously have over PC's. > >Hot swap PCI is old news. True, but not widely implemented in the standard PC market. If you want a server that has hot swap capability, you're likely paying a premium price for a lot of extra other features. It's not something you can typically just build yourself, and if you can you'll need a case that allows you easy access to swap the PCI cards. By the time you pay for an enterprise level server with this capability, I would rather have put the money towards a good router. > > True... unless going for 64 bit PCI at 66MHz... still it's obvious that > > routers are designed for one simple purpose and generally have larger > > backplanes to handle that. > >However, $ for $, even when buying used cisco gear at 80% off from >dot-booms, a PC router will outperform any traditional router. At what speeds though? As you get into the higher gbic speeds, a PC doesn't have the backplane to cut it. Now if we're talking raw processing power, a PC can blow away a router in calculations per second any day. :) > > I agree a router is probably more efficient in just routing packets, but in > > complex filtering or traffic manipulation/packet sniffing, a PC might have > > the edge. :) > >Yes, ipfw/dummy is very very cool. Like, inducing a few 100 msecs of >latency to folks who don't pay on time :) Hehehehe... Interesting approach. I find it more fun to just shut them off. It makes them take you more seriously. Unfortunately I would say only a small percentage of users, may 20% or so would even notice the latency issues if they were having them. They're more likely to complain about slow transfer speeds. That is even more fun and can be done on any traditional Cisco... Traffic shaping is cool but hindered by being limited to controlling outbound traffic on an interface. Rate limiting even more fun. Hmm... [exceed action drop] Why is there so much damn packet loss on my connection when I put traffic across it??? ;) Vinny Abello Network Engineer Server Management vinny(a)tellurian.com (973)300-9211 x 125 (973)940-6125 (Direct) Tellurian Networks - The Ultimate Internet Connection http://www.tellurian.com (888)TELLURIAN

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RE: operational: icmp echo out of control?
by James Smith 23 May '02

23 May '02

> -----Original Message----- > From: Richard A Steenbergen [mailto:ras@e-gerbil.net] > Sent: Thursday, May 23, 2002 4:36 PM > To: Mark Kent > Cc: nanog(a)merit.edu > Subject: Re: operational: icmp echo out of control? > > Path latency doesn't change much, you can determine this with very few > probes. Reachability does not need to be continuously probed, > you can take > cues from other data to decide if you need to re-probe. I wonder if this can be used to profile a network for the sales droids? If one of your routers is being pinged continuously, this might be an indication they are using some sort of "Route Optimization/Failover" box. Especially if you ask them why they are pinging you on the order of 1-5pps and they can't really give an answer and don't turn it down. Sic-em! Sell them that managed BGP! For instance, the FatPipe box does this sort of thing "so you don't have to use BGP" to (sort of) multihome. Link failure is detected by loss of ping response. Failover (link and DNS) is under five seconds, so to prevent premature failover, ping often, and only failover if you take, say, three lost packets. The question for network operators is (just so this is kind of OT), is this kind of monitoring by the customer more of an annoyance, or a real item of operational concern? How would you react if you had a customer pinging the router on your side of his link (or farther upstream) that refused to limit the pings? James H. Smith II NNCDS NNCSE Professional Services - Network Engineer The Presidio Corporation

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Re: Routers vs. PC's for routing - was list problems?
by E.B. Dreger 23 May '02

23 May '02

JC> Date: Thu, 23 May 2002 15:25:14 -0400 (EDT) JC> From: James Cornman JC> We've had some rather good success with FreeBSD based PC JC> Routers. Typical setup was FreeBSD 4.x, 512mb, 20gb RAID-1, JC> 3com Gigabit Ethernet card, Fore Systems OC3 ATM card. All JC> this, with zebra on top. It worked well for a long time, JC> although it turned out getting deprecated because of some JC> zebra issues (with ospfd. They (the problems) weren't JC> confirmed by the zebra community but thats the only thing we JC> could narrow it down to. ospfd would die periodically.) The JC> line cards were bought off of eBay. Yes, for <= 155 Mbps, it works well. My intended point was that Juniper != PC. Yes, both are FreeBSD on x86, which works great. But PCs use the system bus, which is a much harsher limit than having a fast backplane or midplane that just switches data. As Randy said, a router must route _and_ forward. When PCI runs out of gas, you just can't push any more through it. Again: Anyone played with cPSB yet? It looks very promising... The "sweet spot" for building a PC-based router probably would be around 2x or 3x DS3 right now. 7200s have come down in price, but DS3 cards are still fairly valuable. (Not enough price difference in the DS1 game to make a PC-based router worth the effort on the low end... unless one is multihoming and needs more RAM than 26xx or 36{20|40} can hold.) I'm trying to remember what "Buy It Now" was on that M20 on eBay the other day... IIRC, it had 4x OC3 + 4x DS3 + 4x FE. JC> We did VLAN trunking through the 3com GBE card to a Catalyst JC> 3548. Did any rate limiting with DUMMYNET and ipfw pipes. JC> Overall, the whole system worked great for a few months JC> without human interaction, until the ospfd problems. How long ago was this? Zebra has been stagnant for nearly a year now, and my recollection was that late 2000 was when OSPF bugs were biting... -- Eddy Brotsman & Dreger, Inc. - EverQuick Internet Division Phone: +1 (316) 794-8922 Wichita/(Inter)national Phone: +1 (785) 865-5885 Lawrence ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Date: Mon, 21 May 2001 11:23:58 +0000 (GMT) From: A Trap <blacklist(a)brics.com> To: blacklist(a)brics.com Subject: Please ignore this portion of my mail signature. These last few lines are a trap for address-harvesting spambots. Do NOT send mail to <blacklist(a)brics.com>, or you are likely to be blocked.

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Discussion of Results
by John Palmer (NANOG Acct) 23 May '02

23 May '02

Proposal #1 (which passed by over 2/3rds - 67.9%) expresses the sense of the GA that DOC should re-bid the ICANN contract and forget ICANN completely Proposal #2 (which passed by 75%) expresses to ICANN the desire that they reform in a meaningful way, and if they don't, that the DOC should replace ICANN. Interesting.... ---- AGN Domain Name Services, Inc http://www.adns.net Since 1995. The Registry for .AMERICA, .EARTH, .LION, .USA and .Z Define yourself or Be Defined. Censorship-free GA list at : http://dns-o.org/mailman/listinfo/ga

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Re: Routers vs. PC's for routing - was list problems?
by James Cornman 23 May '02

23 May '02

We've had some rather good success with PC based routers. Typical setup was FreeBSD 4.x, 512mb, 20gb RAID-1, 3com Gigabit Ethernet card, Fore Systems OC3 ATM card. All this, with zebra on top. It worked well for a long time, although it turned out getting deprecated because of some zebra issues (with ospfd. They (the problems) weren't confirmed by the zebra community but thats the only thing we could narrow it down to. ospfd would die periodically.) The line cards were bought off of eBay. We did VLAN trunking through the 3com GBE card to a Catalyst 3548. Did any rate limiting with DUMMYNET and ipfw pipes. Overall, the whole system worked great for a few months without human interaction, until the ospfd problems. Feel free to contact me off list if you have any questions. I dont know all of the exact hardware/software tweaking that were done; alot of them were left default, but i'll try to help. -- James Cornman <jamesc(a)nac.net> Net Access Corporation - http://www.nac.net/ On Thu, 23 May 2002, E.B. Dreger wrote: > > ADC> Date: Thu, 23 May 2002 14:30:16 -0400 > ADC> From: Anthony D Cennami > > > ADC> "Not to say you can't route well with a linux or bsd system > ADC> you can but at the high-end probably not as well." > ADC> > ADC> Tell that to Juniper. > > Where can I buy their line cards for my PC? > > > -- > Eddy > > Brotsman & Dreger, Inc. - EverQuick Internet Division > Phone: +1 (316) 794-8922 Wichita/(Inter)national > Phone: +1 (785) 865-5885 Lawrence > > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > Date: Mon, 21 May 2001 11:23:58 +0000 (GMT) > From: A Trap <blacklist(a)brics.com> > To: blacklist(a)brics.com > Subject: Please ignore this portion of my mail signature. > > These last few lines are a trap for address-harvesting spambots. > Do NOT send mail to <blacklist(a)brics.com>, or you are likely to > be blocked. > >

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RE: Certification or College degrees? Was: RE: list problems?
by Rowland, Alan D 23 May '02

23 May '02

While the effectiveness of degree requirements may be argued, they are efficient. When your HR department gets hundreds or thousands of applications, they need some way to find the wheat. The net sector is young and was mostly immune to traditional business practices. Not all traditional business practices are bad (see dot.bomb). Lack of business acumen means the days of six figure income and significant stock options because there were 10 job openings for every geek who could RTFM are over. Even though the "job market is coming back" there's still 20 'techies' in Birkenstocks and Star Wars t-shirts for every (decent) job hiring. Everything else being equal (which is often the case) a cert or degree is a great tie-breaker. Welcome to the traditional job market fellow geeks. Remember all the jokes about Sanitation Engineers? ;) Put another way, when you take that expensive car of yours in for service (you do have one if you're successful in this industry, right? ;) ), do you go to Joe's Garage (apologies to all named Joe) or a dealer/service center with "certified" mechanics? Just my 2¢. The delete key is your friend. Best regards, _________________________________________ Alan Rowland (BS in Business and Management, UofM, 1990 "no warranty expressed or implied, use at your own risk, may be terminated at any time without notice" -----Original Message----- From: Christopher J. Wolff [mailto:chris@bblabs.com] Sent: Wednesday, May 22, 2002 11:16 AM To: nanog(a)merit.edu Subject: Certification or College degrees? Was: RE: list problems? I would add to that statement: Requiring a technology certification is equally as obsurd. I've been told I could pass the Emperor-Level CCIE test; however, I do not believe it will add more value for my customers. Regards, Christopher J. Wolff, VP CIO Broadband Laboratories http://www.bblabs.com Andrew Dorsett said: *jumping on my soap box* I have to say that the idea of requiring a degree for the IT industry is obsurd.

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