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RE: FIBER CUT: Dallas to West Coast
by Chris Boyd 31 Aug '01

31 Aug '01

If you really need diversity, talk to _one_ carrier that can go everywhere you need. It's much easier for one proviioning group to make sure that your circuits don't go through the same fiber, ring, cross-connect, mux, or office if they have complete visibility to both circuits. Nigh impossible if you try to get two different carriers to cooperate like that, I would think. For better or worse, many times carriers wind up putting fiber right next to the competition. One tugboat crash, derailment that spills acid, backhoe, etc can take out all the routes for all the carriers. --Chris > -----Original Message----- > From: Greg Pendergrass [SMTP:greg@band-x.com] > Sent: Thursday, August 30, 2001 2:14 PM > To: Brian; nanog(a)merit.edu > Subject: RE: FIBER CUT: Dallas to West Coast > > > You always have to specify to the carrier that you want diversity. For > longhaul, sometimes even big name providers will subcontract to another > provider. For instance, you may get 1 OC-3 from MCI and another from > Sprint, > but both might be going through the same Qwest OC-192 from Denver to San > Jose. I've seen it happen and it's always ugly for the buyer when someone > backhoes it. You have to specify and sometimes pay more to be certain of > your diversity. > > Greg >

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Re: First it was backhoes, then flaming trains, and now...both?
by Marshall Eubanks 31 Aug '01

31 Aug '01

> > > I found this simply too funny: > > "MULVANE, Kan. (AP) - A freight train carrying hazardous materials caught >fire Thursday after it hit a backhoe apparently parked on the tracks by vandals." >-snip- > > --msa > > It would have been ironic if the accident had severed a major fiber conduit. Regards Marshall Eubanks

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First it was backhoes, then flaming trains, and now...both? (fwd)
by Larry Sheldon 31 Aug '01

31 Aug '01

> I found this simply too funny: > > "MULVANE, Kan. (AP) - A freight train carrying hazardous materials caught > fire Thursday after it hit a backhoe apparently parked on the tracks by vandals." > -snip- > > --msa I wonder how funny the engine crew, fire-fighters, and HAZMAT folk thought it was.

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First it was backhoes, then flaming trains, and now...both?
by Majdi S. Abbas 31 Aug '01

31 Aug '01

I found this simply too funny: "MULVANE, Kan. (AP) - A freight train carrying hazardous materials caught fire Thursday after it hit a backhoe apparently parked on the tracks by vandals." -snip- --msa

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RE: What is the limit? (was RE: multi-homing fixes)
by Roeland Meyer 30 Aug '01

30 Aug '01

|> From: Sam Thomas [mailto:sthomas@lart.net] |> Sent: Thursday, August 30, 2001 2:57 AM |> |> On Wed, Aug 29, 2001 at 11:36:03PM -0700, Roeland Meyer wrote: |> > |> > |> From: Randy Bush [mailto:randy@psg.com] |> > |> Sent: Wednesday, August 29, 2001 9:18 PM |> > |> |> > |> > there would appear to be people who assert its not |> > |> > unafordable to compute the routes for the current, |> > |> > and the forseeable network. |> > |> |> > |> and there are those of us who think we can probably do |> > |> so iff we stop the explosion of /24s. |> > |> > Okay, let's get it back out of the realm of opinion and |> > into requirements. |> > I'll even go down one step more, to /25. Take the entire |> > IP addr space, |> > break it ALL into /25's, times the BGP table entry size, |> > how big is that? |> > Also, I just got a price quote for 512MB ECC PC133 DIMMS |> > at $49US, retail. |> using Jonthan Disher's calculation of 155B/route (a check |> of my local neighborhood gsr gave ~185B/route, but this is |> all academic anyway so we'll use his number since it was |> first and so folk playing along at home can have some |> continuity), i get ~5GB for the whole address space as /25s. |> (using 185B/route, it came to just over 8GB). Thank you, it was the route-entry size that I didn't have defensible numbers on. I knew roughly what they were, but was already out on the limb.<g> |> i don't know of any off the shelf consumer hardware that |> supports >2GB (i looked, really!), so the price to stick |> that $800 ($16 is extremely reasonable shipping cost for |> 16 memory sticks, see if you can find it ;) of ram on |> something just went up an order of magnitude. Okay, well I wasn't talking about COTS boards anyway. I was talking about commodity tech, at the chip level. What us old microP silicon mechanics called the "component" level. Circuit boards all cost the same to build and design, regardless of the content of the design, with minor variations. It's ALL automated these days. Feed a schematic in one end and, about a week later, get a circuit board design out the other, with none-to-little human intervention. Manufacturing is about the same. It is the components that attach to them that contains the variable cost. It is those components whose cost is dropping like lemmings off a cliff. You see, chip design and manufacture is almost getting to the same place as circuit boards. The only human-introduced variable is in the original design and architecture. That cost is amortised over the volume of units sold. This is where commodity tech has a huge cost/performance advantage. |> > Considering what router vendors charge, with very fat |> > margins, for their low-tech routers, affordable tech |> > arguments don't hold water. Routers are expensive |> > because someone is stupid enough to pay the prices. |> i guess we're in the wrong business. we should go develop |> discount routers using near-current off-the-shelf |> technology. thinking this through, i'm already amazed at |> the lack of glut for discount high-capacity routers. You haven't been paying attention to the stock market then. Why do you think router vendor stock prices are dropping like flies? Maybe because there *is* a glut of cheap used equipment? This is forcing more sane prices on them and, as a direct result, their earnings reports are down. |> oops. some folk (like me) actually want the core router |> to be able to handle a chassis chock-full-o-oc48s. |> that'll take a bit of specialized hardware. oh, and |> it would be really nice-ah if the router could forward |> ip packets amongst those oc48s at something approaching |> line-rate. that'll take an industrial strength backplane. |> not finding too many multi-Gb/s backplanes on pricewatch.com, |> so guess that will have to be custom built, and we'll |> probably have to develop some custom circuitry to handle the |> custom backplane as well. I'll bet that COGm, for a Cisco Catalyst 6509, with all GigE blades, is under $5KUS. Further, that the major cost is the sheet-metal and paint work, not the electronix. In the last three years, I emplaced 6 of them at ~$200K each. Please tell me that isn't a very fat margin and yes, I do know about keystone pricing and how the distro channel works. Even R&D isn't a major cost, given enough volume. Manufacturing has been commoditized for over 20 years. Are you telling me that Cisco can't give us better tech, for less money, than they've been doing thus far? |> shoot, forgot software. we've run up the cost so much, we'll |> just drop in a peecee with a linux kernel and zebra. we |> won't be able to route packets through it, though, so i |> guess we'll have to custom manufacture some other |> device to handle the actual packing shuffling. or, we |> could custom develop a single unit and some software that |> runs on it. i'm sure there are plenty of |> bgp/mpls/multicast/etc clued programmers willing to work |> in our software sweatshop for minimum wage to keep costs low. see, Richard Stallman and the FSF. I'll save my thoughts on open-source "free" software for another day. Please know that MHSC is a Caldera VAR (still dealing with Caldera assilimating the "enemy", SCO), and we can sell you a copy of SCO OpenUNIX these days (but not cheap <sigh>). Yes, I've had GateD running for some time now. Software cost is a part of R&D costs. |> so, after all this, how big of a bargain is using that $800 |> in ram so far? All the additional conditions should make ZERO difference to the COGs of the product. Are you telling me that 8GB worth of table entries is a small market? |> ok, it's still probably at least a few bucks cheaper than |> vendor X. let's go sell it. hah! silly customers want a |> number to call when it breaks. well, it uses cheap |> off-the-shelf memory and processor, how much can it really |> cost to support? You know ... in the past 10 years, with many hundreds of servers, I have had ZERO CPU failures and ZERO RAM failures, past the infant mortality period. Even in workstations, all such failures were caused by brilliant actions, like restricting the airflow (wrapping the darned thing in a blanket, once), even then, the HDDs were the first to die. With zero moving parts, if you can keep them cool, they run forever. They obsolece long before they die. I have one old server, an amdK6-233, whose RAM (128MB of SIMMs) has been in 24x7 operation for over 6 years. It's also running a AHA2940 that has seen 24x7 operation since 1996. |> since we used commodity hardware (at least ram and |> processor), we won't have to stock spares. i'm sure |> we can trust our customers to buy the right parts |> off the shelf at "Bubba's Fine House of PeeCee Hardware". You can kid around if you want to. But, you're only showing irrational bias. An Intel part is an Intel part, regardless of whether Bubba or Einstein sells it to you. Likewise with RAM. If the board don't take standard PC133 RAM then the design is defective. Bubba doesn't make the parts. He only sells them. Unless, Bubba has a silicon foundry in his basement. In that case, his name probably isn't Bubba. |> now, would everyone kindly get off the $EXPENSIVE ram from |> vendor X whine? Those who discount, discounts, wind up broke, before those that don't. |> > royally ripped off there. Cisco takes special RAM because |> > Cisco designed incompatible RAM circuitry so they could |> > charge you more for the Cisco label. It also bolsters |> > the FUD-storm and the after-market support vendors. |> |> or, maybe it's because they had the foresight to know that |> if they used commodity ram, a bunch of cheapskate morons |> would be plugging in the cheapest ram they could find at |> the saturday morning swapmeet, and making dozens of |> "warranty" support calls because the router crashes all the |> time or half the packets come through looking like |> swiss cheese. Maybe the alternative was to hire competent circuit design engineers that could design circuits that don't have those vulnerabilities? In my book, the moron was the fool that didn't design with those cheapskates in mind.

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Re: What is the limit? (was RE: multi-homing fixes)
by Vadim Antonov 30 Aug '01

30 Aug '01

Actually, talking about water/electricity interaction in refrigerators, lab equipment, etc, misses the very simple point - a probability of a leak is proportional (as a good approximation :) to the number of moveable components (PCBs, connectors, etc) in the system. In a typical CO it's tens or hundreds of thousands. --vadim PS. Water is not a good coolant, and even distilled and deionized water tends to pick ions from metal parts rather quickly. Spirits are flammable; CFCs are bad for environment. There's also an issue of toxicity. Of course, everything is doable, but what is the cost? Off-the-shelf components are all designed for air cooling. Switching to liquid cooling means a lot of custom stuff; which is expensive and which takes a long time to design and manufacture. PPS It is not voltage which matters, it's current :) Even if leaks do not cause shorts the moisture accumulation may corrode parts leading to mechanical shorts, it also may cause excessive cross-talk. Sporadically malfunctioning equipment is much worse than flat-out burned out. PPS Finally, getting your hands wet makes your changes to get killed by electricity _much_ higher. 48V won't do you any harm if your hands are dry, it may kill if they're wet.

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Re: FIBER CUT: Dallas to West Coast
by Sean Donelan 30 Aug '01

30 Aug '01

On Wed, 29 August 2001, Patrick Greenwell wrote: > > The difference is the carrier's response, in particular how well they > > keep their customers informed. > > That is certainly *a* point of differentiation, however if the goal of > these "basement dual-homers" is to not suffer downtime due to the > outage of a single provider(much like the organizations that "matter"), > all the responsiveness in the world from a provider whose circuit to > one of the "basement dual-homers" which has failed isn't going to prevent > them from being down, is it? I don't know what the goal of "basement dual-homers" is. I think that is the other thread, which I haven't been keeping up with. It is possible to reduce the impact of most provider problems. I had a seven year streak without a service affecting outage at my NOC longer than the BGP route convergence interval. Even "hot-standby, fail-over" systems require a finite time to recover. Even with all the network insanity between 1993 and 2000, I was always able to reach the working portion of the Internet. If my own connection didn't work, how could I post about those problems. It was a lot of hard work, and I'll admit I had a very steep learning curve. And I'll be the first to admit, there were force maejure events my network wouldn't be able to handle. But those were my choices, and I could make those decisions with accurate information. The first step of operating a reliable network is choosing carriers willing to keep you, their customer, fully informed. Only after you have accurate information from the carriers can you make informed decisions concerning your network. Most of my biggest problems occurred due to inaccurate or lack of information from a carrier. If I know about the risk, I could choose to mitigate it or choose to do nothing. If the carrier doesn't keep me informed about jeopardy conditions in their network, managing that risk is more difficult. A side-effect of the lack of information is the extrodinary measures customers feel they must take to protect their network connectivity. Do you really need to multi-home, have your own AS number, have your own CIDR block for reliable network connectivity? With DHCP, you could just unplug from one provider and plug into the new one, and auto-magically have connectivity. With Dynamic DNS update you could automagically redirect your DNS name to your new address. IP addresses could be assigned geographically, instead of by provider, and aggregation could take place anywhere from the census tract level to the hemisphere level.

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ot - new edge
by Steven J. Sobol 30 Aug '01

30 Aug '01

Looking for people who have experience reselling bandwidth from New Edge Networks.... replies offlist please. THanks -- JustThe.net LLC - Steve "Web Dude" Sobol, CTO - sjsobol(a)JustThe.net Donate a portion of your monthly ISP bill to your favorite charity or non-profit organization! E-mail me for details.

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BGP Instability
by Mark Borchers 30 Aug '01

30 Aug '01

Currently seeing unusually high numbers of routes being dampened (~11K). The common denominator seems to be AS 4637 in the as-path of most of the dampened prefixes. Is any further information known? Thanks, -- Mark Borchers McLeodUSA Data Services IP Engineering 9012 New Trails Dr. mborchers(a)splitrock.net The Woodlands, TX 77381 (281) 465-1931 http://www.mcleod.net/

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Liquid cooling... (was RE: What is the limit? (was RE: multi-homi ng fixes))
by James Smith 30 Aug '01

30 Aug '01

Actually, the fluid referenced in the URL (Fluorinert) is used to cool some Crays. It is only manufactured by one maker, and only a few systems use it. There are actual liquid cooled Cray parts in the NSA museum near Ft Meade. Non-operational, of course, just like this post... James H. Smith II NNCDS NNCSE Systems Engineer The Presidio Corporation -----Original Message----- From: Charles Sprickman [mailto:spork@inch.com] Sent: Thursday, August 30, 2001 3:45 PM To: Alex Rubenstein Cc: Daniel Senie; nanog(a)merit.edu Subject: Re: What is the limit? (was RE: multi-homing fixes) On Wed, 29 Aug 2001, Alex Rubenstein wrote: > I recall something about liquid (something, could be nitrogen, or perhaps > even mercury) that was chilled; PC Boards were then submersed in the > liquid to keep cool. > > Maybe on Crays? Maybe in someone's garage? :) http://www.octools.com/articles/submersion/submersion12.html C > -- Alex Rubenstein, AR97, K2AHR, alex(a)nac.net, latency, Al Reuben -- > -- Net Access Corporation, 800-NET-ME-36, http://www.nac.net -- > >

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