- Test - lists.nanog.org

Cisco Misrepresents Results of First Independent Test of Core Routers
by Robert Beverly 15 Mar '01

15 Mar '01

Appologies if some of you have already seen this. Cisco reached some interesting conclusions from this test in their press release: http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/010314/0647.html stating that their 12416 performed the best. Lightreading issued a subsequent warning about the inaccuracies of Cisco's statement: http://www.bigcharts.com/news/articles.asp?newsid=776376576&symb=JNPR&sid=1… rob > Readers of this list may be interested > in the results of a four-vendor > core router bakeoff just posted here: > > http://lightreading.com/testing > > Each vendor supplied: > > up to 12 x OC-192c > up to 48 x OC-48c > > The entries were: > > Charlotte's Networks Aranea-1 > Cisco 12416 > Foundry NetIron > Juniper M160 > > Tests included: > > IP baselines > MPLS baselines > BGP table capacity > MPLS LSP capacity > longest-match lookup > route flapping > route convergence > filtering > class of service > > There's also a discussion of packet reordering.

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RE: Statements against new.net?
by Roeland Meyer 15 Mar '01

15 Mar '01

> From: Scott Francis [mailto:scott@virtualis.com] > Sent: Tuesday, March 13, 2001 11:13 PM > On Tue, Mar 13, 2001 at 08:47:05PM -0800, Patrick Greenwell > had this to say: > > > > > > Unfortunately, "the market" tends to consist in large > majority of 1) users, > > > and 2) management. And we all know how bright those two particular > > > segments of the population tend to be. > > > > Well, those are the people defining your paycheck, sure you > want to write > > them off so quickly? > > the very reason they pay my (all our) paycheck is for > technical expertise - Not! They pay for connectivity and for you to meet their expectations. Operators are NOT programmers. Operators didn't build the system, programmers did. Operators are hired to simply keep the system running. Guess who they both work for? ... that's right, Managers whom report to owners/stockholders, who want you to keep customers happy, so that they make more money. Your technical expertise is almost incidental to that process. > if Joe Q. User had technical expertise sufficient to make > informed decisions on this type of matter, why would he need > to hire a network operator? Because they would rather be doing more important things, like make money, pay mortgages, go on vacation ... It's the reason that AOL stays in business. > I'm not saying that users, clients and management don't have > their place - Wrongo, they don't have a place, they OWN the place! Whatever else they may be, the customer is always right! You are simply their servent. > but I _AM_ saying that place is _not_ in making critical > _technical_ decisions that will have a significant, > possibly severely detrimental, effect on the > future of the networks they have hired _us_ to operate for them. I remember such statements, from the IBM priest-hood, in the early 80's. It was considered beyond arrogant, even then. Tell this to your CEO. They will humor you and then do what they want anyway. They may, or maynot, keep you around. But, you will certainly be marked as a typical geek-without-clue and upward mobility will thereafter be restricted. It's called a glass-ceiling. Back in the day ... you rarely saw ex-IBM System Operators higher than middle-management. > > You might want to take a long, careful, hard look at who has been doing > > the sanctioning and how they've been making those decisions before jumping > > on the bandwagon. Just a friendly suggestion. > > This whole matter boils down to one question - that being, > what way is the > Right Way to operate DNS or its equivalent? It seems to me > (and a few others) > that, logically, any hierarchical system _must_ have an > ultimate authority - > not 2 or 3 or 27, which is essentially what new.net is trying > to do: create an alternate ultimate authority. How exactly will a user know > which site foo.com takes them to, if new.net's response and the rest of > the Internet's response a la *.root-servers.net don't jibe? The concept of > unique and separate > domains breaks down when you have conflicting responses to > the question, "Where > does this domain actually point?" > > What some of us are saying is the new.net concept in its current forms is > _guaranteed_ to create exactly that kind of confusion, all arguments about > politics or alternate addressing possibilities aside.

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DSL backhaul provisioning
by William Allen Simpson 15 Mar '01

15 Mar '01

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Getting to something more operational, we've been deploying DSL here and there in onesies and twosies (well, even a dozen) alongside the dialup POPs, and not bothering a lot about adding more capacity. I've been keeping the number of modems to about 8 customers per modem, and 200 modems per T1 (roughly 8 per 56K channel), just as a rule of thumb. In our experience, this keeps the dialin lines busy at no more than 20 minutes per day at peak, and the T1s average 70% utilization at peak. Customers seem reasonably happy. We just got a bid on DSL service saying they provision at 200 DSL per T1. That seems awfully high to me, since DSL potentially runs a lot more traffic than 56Kbps modems. I was planning at 24 per T1. Who's right? We don't have enough aggregate experience with DSL, even though we've been offering it for about a year now. Individually, the chicken plant (our first installation), car parts factory, jeans factory, bookstores, etc, don't give a very consistent usage pattern. Any of the bigger folks have a rule of thumb? -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGPfreeware 7.0.3 for non-commercial use <http://www.pgp.com> iQCVAwUBOq7NtNm/qMj6R+sxAQEAfQP/VsU6X6lJ8HbAFw4N73ThML5jXDvCZE6G AfO12mLxSWNyigxGkkf/nvsDWVFFnoMgs2v+yIxm/l+ec11i3EG3P3x0efYAyAX6 Xet28KyNx335kkT+WI1dz06nVfeWqUlldS+lgQPgODV8KlJms6T8fbkCT09As3t3 cORbWFxG6mw= =Nqoi -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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RE: DECNet over IP?
by Spencer.Wood＠dot.state.oh.us 14 Mar '01

14 Mar '01

Actually, you can do it using just a single ethernet port on a router. Here are the config's that we used on our routers for Banyan Tunneling: End1 ===== int tunnel1 no ip address bandwidth 1000 vines metric 45 tunnel source ethernet0 tunnel destination 10.2.1.1 int e0 ip address 10.1.1.1 vines metric 2 End2 ==== int tunnel1 no ip address bandwidth 1000 vines metric 45 tunnel source ethernet0/0 tunnel dest 10.1.1.1 int e0/0 ip address 10.2.1.1 vines metric 2 ====== That's pretty much it. Now, if you have a lot of sites and you want to keep your tunnel config's pretty simple, I would recommend just setting up a router some where on your network and point all of your tunnels to that router., but this would really depend on your network and how it is configured. Does this help? Spencer **************************************************** Spencer Wood, Network Administrator 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: 815.361.0714 **************************************************** "Stillman, Kevin" <STILLMKT(a)sysadm.suny.edu> Sent by: owner-nanog(a)merit.edu 03/14/2001 03:09 PM To: "'nanog(a)merit.edu'" <nanog(a)merit.edu> cc: Subject: RE: DECNet over IP? Thank you all for your advise. Unfortunately I am working with a Bay/NortelNetwork environment. Nortel's implementation of GRE tunneling does not support DECNet Phase IV. The kludge of a solution that has been proposed to me by Nortel is transitioning the native DECNet phase IV communication to DECNet phase V, which works in OSI, then tunnel the OSI using GRE. I'm going to try it in a lab, but I have serious doubts about how well it will work. It is a scary proposition. If anyone has actually seen this work I love to hear from you. The solution that I need to create is one that will not require the DEC administrators on LANs using our WAN for DECNet interconnectivity to make any changes on their VAXes, printers... etc. That means Compaq or third party software on the VAX cannot be part of the solution. Basically it needs to be transparent to the LAN. If Cisco is capable of tunneling DECNet phase IV right out of the box, then I think I may have my solution. This would mean the router would run DECNet on the ethernet and run a GRE tunnel over the IP network on the sync port(s). Does this sound like the right idea? Thanks again! Kevin

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RE: Statements against new.net?
by Mathew Butler 14 Mar '01

14 Mar '01

Cube B23, 871 Fox Lane, San Jose, California, USA, North-Western Quadrisphere, Earth, 3rd planet of Sol, Milky Way Galaxy, Universe. I just hierarchally described my work location. Assertion (2) given at least one counter-example, assumed to be false until either restated or counter-example disproven. Assertion (1) assumed true. How do multiple roots assist #1? When I can type 'new.net' and, depending on the root zone that I'm using, believe either ICANN's idea of new.net or my personal root's delegation of the new.net. zone? Your assertion about ICQ: ICQ provides a lookup function, and the only UIN that I used on my ICQ list was my own to get it installed. Are you suggesting that instead of DNS zones, we should instead use an LDAP directory (or something similar) to look up what we're searching for? I think the idea of 'chosen' domain names is a stupid concept, in any case -- though I do admit I -like- the mnemonic convenience of my email address at home. I think it's more likely that the DNS has probably scaled to the point that it needs to be examined to be replaced. -Mat Butler -----Original Message----- From: Vadim Antonov [mailto:avg@kotovnik.com] Sent: Wednesday, March 14, 2001 12:46 PM To: Mathew Butler Cc: nanog(a)merit.edu Subject: RE: Statements against new.net? On Wed, 14 Mar 2001, Mathew Butler wrote: > The problem is, of course, that it's NOT human-to-human communication. It's > machine-to-machine communication, and human-to-machine communication, and > DNS was designed to create a mnemonic representation of a way to reach a > machine. If it is machines communicating there's no need to do any mnemonics. In fact, it is still humans communicating, with the aid of the machines. So... we have two design constraints: 1) people need to be able to locate and revisit somethings in the network 2) any meaningful hierarchial labeling of the real world is quite impossible, and runs into problems of scaling, adversity, and entrenched notions of ownership. Propping up DNS as-is only guarantees that the whole thing is going to be pushed off the cliff on the second side. Neither it is very good on the first count. So, instead of trying to fix the broken concept, and raising ridiculous protests and indignation when someone tries to rock the boat, isn't it easier just to go for a real permanent solution? Which is to replace "mnemonic" DNS with something deliberately mnemonic-free (like numeric strings :) and leave the human-interaction part to the better and wildly successful concept of navigation in a general graph. The exising deployed software is nearly sufficient (and in many cases quite adequate) to make this mode of communication easy to use. My proposal is to create a special hierarchy (similar to tpc.int) which can _only_ be used to register numeric "names" on first-come first-served basis. The "current" DNS then can go down in flames, for all i care. Actually, I think this is inevitable, since some day someone will find a way to win a lawsuit against the whatever central naming authority is. Anyone who thinks numeric IDs do not work when "better" alphanumeric IDs are possible needs to take a look at the ICQ. It is _very_ successful in case you didn't notice. And so is telephony. And in case you didn't notice that most people in the world do not speak english, and do not use latin script, let me tell you the simple (and quite obvious to someone who is not spoiled by American isolationism) fact: for the majority of world population ASCII strings are only marginally better than numbers in being "mnemonic" - and it is much easier to pronounce numbers in a native language. --vadim

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RE: Statements against new.net?
by Mathew Butler 14 Mar '01

14 Mar '01

If the Commerce Department ruled that new.net threatened the very core of how the Internet works (which it does -- resolver libraries and nameservers were written to the spec, and the spec said that ONE zone was owned and managed by ONE entity -- and multiple root zones were never included in that concept), then I could see it legally working. -Mat Butler Speaking for myself, not my employer. -----Original Message----- From: Mark Radabaugh - Amplex [mailto:mark@amplex.net] Sent: Wednesday, March 14, 2001 10:19 AM To: nanog(a)merit.edu Subject: RE: Statements against new.net? > > BUT if representatives from a dozen or a hundred ISPs meet > together and > choose to blackhole new.net for the explicit purpose of > running them out > of business, and then do so, they would be in violation of US > anti-trust > laws. > > -- David But what if a quasi-government organization (ICANN) explicitly blessed the concept of banning alternate roots :-) Now there is a can of worms... Mark Radabaugh Amplex (419) 833-3635

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RE: Statements against new.net?
by Mathew Butler 14 Mar '01

14 Mar '01

The problem is, of course, that it's NOT human-to-human communication. It's machine-to-machine communication, and human-to-machine communication, and DNS was designed to create a mnemonic representation of a way to reach a machine. "Hey, tiger's down!" "Hey, one nine two dot one six eight dot one oh three dot two five three's down!" (Even if you take an example with 192.168 being where ALL the addresses in the network come from: "Hey, one oh three dot two five three's down!") In order for the machine to be able to determine what to do, it must be programmed by the humans that created it. In order for the machine to be able to determine what to do in a situation that has more than one possibly-correct resolution, it must be given a set of rules in order to determine what needs to be done. I will admit that it is possible (not plausible, but possible) for even an email system to be programmed with enough intelligence to be able to deal with the conflict. However, the key word is 'system' -- defined as "all pieces in a computing environment that contribute to a given piece of data being processed the way the humans that are using it desire it to be processed." Which includes all mail servers (speaking SMTP), as well as all mail clients (speaking SMTP, POP3, IMAP, whatever else), and name resolution (DNS, /etc/hosts, NIS, whatever else), and even the underlying virtual circuit technology (TCP/IPv[46]). The entire system must be programmed in a way that is consistent with how the user wants it to work... and getting even two sites to upgrade to a newer version of sendmail at the same time is difficult at best. Much less to get two sites to change their DNS configuration at the same time. The point is: In order to do our jobs, we have to simplify these complex systems we're responsible for as much as possible. At least with a globally-shared root zone, we're removing THAT piece of complexity from the equation so we can determine what needs to be done at a higher level. (Am I lazy? Perhaps. But I'd rather be lazy than crazy.) -Mat Butler Speaking for himself, not for his company. -----Original Message----- From: Vadim Antonov [mailto:avg@kotovnik.com] Sent: Tuesday, March 13, 2001 9:06 PM To: Geoff Huston Cc: nanog(a)merit.edu Subject: Re: Statements against new.net? Of course, one may choose to treat RFC as a gospel, but to me (and i hope to anyone interested in how cognition works to the point of actually getting acquainted with the relevant research) the attached passage sounds quite like a bunch of random noise :) Mostly because it assumes that human-to-human communication is a reasoned process, concerned with consistent intepretation. In fact, most of what makes, for example, art interesting is that it does not have a singular, well defined interpretation. --vadim PS This one, i guess, is brought to you by the Society Against De-Humanization Of Internet Users <tongue firmly in cheek> PPS Yes, I think any form which _restricts_ potential models of communication is bad. Such as forcing communications to be moderated by a singular hierarchical structure. This whole thread won't be there in the first place if the scheme actually worked well in the real world. Hierarchies do not scale and cannot adequately tolerate internalized adversity. On Wed, 14 Mar 2001, Geoff Huston wrote: > At 3/14/01 07:56 AM, Vadim Antonov wrote: > > > >That is based on the assumption that consistency is necessary > >or desireable :) Of course, it is dear to an engineer's mind, > >but the case from the sociological point of view is far from > >clear-cut. In fact, way too many woes of human societies can > >be (at least indirectly) attributed to the misguided attempts > >to enforce consistency. > > This assumption is explicitly addressed in the RFC - I quote: > > ------ > 1.1. Maintenance of a Common Symbol Set > > Effective communications between two parties requires two essential > preconditions: > > - The existence of a common symbol set, and > > - The existence of a common semantic interpretation of these symbols. > Failure to meet the first condition implies a failure to communicate at > all, while failure to meet the second implies that the meaning of the > communication is lost. > > In the case of a public communications system this condition of a common > symbol set with a common semantic interpretation must be further > strengthened to that of a unique symbol set with a unique semantic > interpretation. This condition of uniqueness allows any party to initiate a > communication that can be received and understood by any other party. Such > a condition rules out the ability to define a symbol within some bounded > context. In such a case, once the communication moves out of the context of > interpretation in which it was defined, the meaning of the symbol becomes > lost.

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FW: FW: DECNet over IP?
by Timothy R. McKee 14 Mar '01

14 Mar '01

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 - -----Original Message----- From: Rick Irving [mailto:rirving@onecall.net] Sent: Wednesday, March 14, 2001 14:08 To: Timothy R. McKee Subject: Re: FW: DECNet over IP? Cisco bought it. It works! I have been running it for over 5 years, so far. "Timothy R. McKee" wrote: > > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > - -----Original Message----- > From: Timothy R. McKee [mailto:trm3@nuvox.net] > Sent: Wednesday, March 14, 2001 12:12 > To: Simon Lockhart > Subject: RE: DECNet over IP? > > - -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > Back a few years ago the Multinet stack for VMS supported DECNet/TCP > interworking... Don't know who has the product now... If it is truly VAX > and not alpha, the old CMU implementation had a DECNet driver. > > Tim > > - - -----Original Message----- > From: owner-nanog(a)merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog@merit.edu]On Behalf Of > Simon Lockhart > Sent: Wednesday, March 14, 2001 11:30 > To: Stillman, Kevin > Cc: 'nanog(a)merit.edu' > Subject: Re: DECNet over IP? > > >Has anyone had any experience successfully getting native DECNet packets > >encapsulated in an IP packet and transmitted over an IP network? The > >solution I am trying to create will allow VAXes to continue to talk DECNet > >on their LANs and have the ability to communicate with DECNet areas on a > WAN > >via IP. Essentially we are try to remove the DECNet protocol from our > >intranet while not disrupting location's DECNet configurations. > > I've not tried it, but my gut reaction would be to use GRE tunnels. Have > you looked on cisco.com for sample configs? > > Simon > - - -- > Simon Lockhart | Tel: +44 (0)1737 839676 > Internet Engineering Manager | Fax: +44 (0)1737 839516 > BBC Internet Services | Email: Simon.Lockhart(a)bbc.co.uk > Kingswood Warren,Tadworth,Surrey,UK | URL: http://support.bbc.co.uk/ > > - -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- > Version: PGPfreeware 7.0.3 for non-commercial use <http://www.pgp.com> > > iQA/AwUBOq+mWhRIXzEQLahvEQK+6ACgqYZoc23CJoKBBTnOhwYhS8cdczIAoKR5 > euFqSHT+jko90sZNE8Q5Bk2W > =Ncri > - -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- > > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- > Version: PGPfreeware 7.0.3 for non-commercial use <http://www.pgp.com> > > iQA/AwUBOq+uWBRIXzEQLahvEQIyMwCcCJmFrXtcln3VrXumw+wzDUSzrC4An0Oh > GN6mImDsbwExEqfzqqJDrgSW > =O+xu > -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGPfreeware 7.0.3 for non-commercial use <http://www.pgp.com> iQA/AwUBOq/UkBRIXzEQLahvEQLfHACeNXh2w/IzGQ0Ont04kmoKL2nY58MAoPUF SBEuEAZwvzpqosBACbqCMbEF =6f44 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Single DNS Root (was Re: Statements against new.net?)
by Simon Higgs 14 Mar '01

14 Mar '01

At 10:21 PM 3/13/01 -0500, you wrote: >but I've been saying ever since this whole >topic came up that the worst possible outcome was more than one root. >Nothing that has happened in the interim has changed my mind about that. Yes, but you haven't been part of the solution either. That makes you part of the problem. Shouting "oh my, how terrible" in All Caps doesn't help solve the situation or stop the problem from occurring again. There is no technical need for more than one root. Every alt.root worth talking to will admit that. There are multiple roots because of the **multiple failures** to introduce competition to the NSI registry. Draft Postel was canned in favor of the gTLD-MOU which was canned in favor of the Green/White paper that founded ICANN - who has now disenfranchised almost everybody who was once willing to give it a chance (if not $50,000). With the growth of alt.roots, you are seeing the Internet route around a single point of failure - specifically competition within the US Government root zone. The IAB's fabulously entitled "Unique DNS Root" is seen as major damage to the health of the Internet, and the Internet community is routing around it with alt.roots. Is there a pattern here? Yes. Can it be called a consensus? Yes. The alt.roots are doing DNS coordination on their own without an ICANN expense account or a "big 4" accounting firm. The two roots which are doing the least coordination are the ones that have tried to take ICANN/IANA head-on and lost (PGP Media/Name.Space and .TV/IdeaLab/New.net). Is there a pattern here? Yes. Can it be called a consensus? Yes. What I'm getting at here is that the alt.root community would probably rather go away and become registries under RFC1591 (even Postel admitted to me RFC1591 isn't just for the ccTLDs) than have to endure a minority share of Internet users. Because the access to the US Government root is completely tied up by Verisign and ICANN playing kissy-kissy (I won't go into the current agreement farce), the Internet community is voting away from the US Government root on a daily basis. The longer the ICANN/DoC doors are closed to the "Unique DNS Root", the more alt.roots will spring up. And the more that spring up, the more of the Internet will support them. Is there a pattern here? Yes. Can it be called a consensus? Yes. The solution is simple. Open up the US Government root to all parties on an equitable basis (RFC1591). Or accept the consequences of a fractured root. All I'm trying to do is some damage control until either one happens. I told the IAHC back in 1996 this would happen and it's happened. Could multiple roots have been avoided? Damn right they could have. Crying over it now doesn't solve the problem or make them "magically" go away. Are you going to stick your head back in the sand and say "oh, how terrible" over and over, or are you going to help the alt.root community come to a unified single-root consensus? Best Regards, Simon -- "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, and then you win. And once you have won, they join you." - Mahatma Gandhi

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Re: Statements against new.net?
by Simon Higgs 14 Mar '01

14 Mar '01

At 11:29 AM 3/13/01 -0800, Patrick Greenwell wrote: >The fact that there currently exists several different operations root >server networks(ORSC, Pacific Root, Name.Space) to name a few. In fact, >if you ask ICANN board member Karl Auerbach, he'll tell you he uses the ORSC >root servers. I'll raise you a TLD. Karl Auerbach has put the .EWE TLD into the ORSC root. ***We Have An ICANN Board Member With A TLD In An ALT.ROOT*** Y'all should let that sink in for a while. Best Regards, Simon -- "You can't vote on facts" - Brian Carpenter

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