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OT: statistics and a question
by Larry Snyder 06 Apr '00

06 Apr '00

67 out of the last 86 posts were in re: Exodus/PSI/Gordon/whatever. I have an equally on-topic question: Can someone in the UK contact me about a UK timezone question on a Solaris box? Off-list, please. thanx, -ls-

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Re: WCOM Newark, NJ fiber outage (under water)
by Sean Donelan 06 Apr '00

06 Apr '00

Rumor is a backhoe was not involved, another implement of fiber destruction was used: a fishing trawler. >Worldcom is reporting a multiple fiber system outage between Dayton and >Avenell, NJ. Techs are on site, but no ETR.

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Bill Woodcock had it right when he wrote: "_this thread really needs to end_."
by Gordon Cook 06 Apr '00

06 Apr '00

There have been requests to stop this thread. I would be happy to comply but the snipping keeps coming and when I let some of the more inane remarks go by without answering others step in and continue to pile it on. To wit from Paul Ferguson: Business practices, on the other hand (which is what people are building around the Internet these days), and confidentiality, are not [mutually exclusive]. Let's be clear about what we are talking about here. - paul (who promised himself he wouldn't add to this discussion, but lied) Now Barry Shein, who has been around rather longer than I, answered Paul's question last night. Perhaps Paul didn't see Barry's answer: On Tue, Apr 04, 2000 at 05:45:46PM -0400, Barry Shein wrote: > > Unless Gordon is an Exodus customer I'll assume he was sent the > communique' by an Exodus customer. There's probably some truck with > that customer, but if Gordon is only acting in his role as a reporter > then, well, short of creating an imminent threat to someone's life > (like revealing the whereabouts of someone in a witness protection > program) or libel or a few other similar kinds of problems generally > reporters report if they think something is newsworthy. > > Put another way, just about half of everything one generally finds > interesting, from the white house's handling of certain emails to what > the tobacco companies tried to do to thwart suits against them was > once marked confidential. Almost everything interesting gets marked > confidential. > > Put yet another way; If one's only plan is to mark a letter sent out > to every customer (what? hundreds?) as marked "customer confidential" > and hope that oughta stop it from getting out and that everyone who > receives it agrees that it's in their best interest, or ethics, to go > along with that confidentiality, then I think they need another plan. Paul, as you know I am not a customer of Exodus and have therefore no business relationship with it. Barry's has shown that there is no logic in Exodus which has an embarrassing customer service problem (it can't give them the service for which they have paid) thinking that by marking its admission of the problem "confidential" it can get its short-changed customers to conspire with it to keep the news that they have been short changed from leaking Other's here commented that having the data I provided was useful to them in doing customer support work of their own. Then Valdis Kleinieks commented: I think it's safe to conclude that at least a good fraction of Gordon's listed sources were giving him information fully aware of where it was going to end up. To make the point that **all of them are fully aware** I wrote:" Further more I have always had a rule that a formal interviewee will have no surprises. I tape the interview and assure the person interviewed that he or she will get a draft asciii copy of what i propose to publish and have seven days to read that copy an return it to me with any mistakes or technical errors corrected and ***within reason*** things rephrased if the interviewee feels that he or she can say them better. " The whole point of a technical interview is to let a technical matter subject expert provide information - yes content- describing how new technology or business works and why it is significant. Now Henry Linneweh after I ignored his earlier remarks had the following additional shot at twisting my words. It is kind of neat actually that someone actually cares enough to let the content provider edit their article so that real news content is provided. The implication being that the interviewee has full control of the article which, as my interviewees well know, is not correct. The purpose is to get technical experts to explain their expertise so that the internet literate reader can understand that expertise with the greatest accuracy and greatest clarity possible. The purpose is NOT to trap and embarrass the interviewee by hanging around his or her neck in perpetuity every clumsily uttered phrase that he or she wishes to fix. I would suggest to those on this list who dislike me that they have the simple honesty to say so rather than to get in their digs by twisted and out-of-context commentary. Let me close by saying that if some of you wish to continue to waste your colleague's time with continued smears, it's up to you. Paul has given me a worthy challenge to see if I can maintain the silence that he promised and then did not deliver. Two days ago I offered this mail list a piece of information about the operational state of the internet - information unknown to most readers here and finally reported in the trade press only today. In two days we have had about 90 responses roughly 10 per cent of which contained technical follow up and 90% of which were opinions about the messenger rather than the message. The thread could have achieved a useful purpose in less than 10 posts. Bill Woodcock had it right when he wrote: Confidentiality exists whenever it is stipulated in a contract. A contract, to be valid and enforceable, must define a reciprocal exchange of value. Exodus has conveyed no value to Gordon in reciprocity for expectation of his secrecy. Exodus has conveyed no value to the recipients of their unsolicited mass mailing in reciprocity for the expectation of their secrecy. Attaching a label which reads "confidential" to something which you then distribute via unsolicited mass mailing does not make it confidential. In fact, the opposite is true. This is, arguably, interesting. Gordon is a journalist. Gordon is an editor. Gordon is a publisher. Godon's job in each of these roles is to gather and sell interesting information to his customers, and perhaps to promote the state of customerhood by occasionally releasing small pieces of interesting information to prospective customers. If Exodus had _not_ labelled their unsolicited mass mailing "confidential" in an attempt to create propaganda, it would be _less_ newsworthy. A tactic of both advertisers and propagandists is to attempt to harness the media by making their propaganda appear to be news. Saying something does not make it so. This is only obvious to those who have two neurons to rub together, however. Information wants to be free, however _this thread really needs to end_. **************************************************************** The COOK Report on Internet Index to 8 years of the COOK Report 431 Greenway Ave, Ewing, NJ 08618 USA http://cookreport.com (609) 882-2572 (phone & fax) Battle for Cyberspace: How cook(a)cookreport.com Crucial Technical . . . - 392 pages just published. See http://cookreport.com/ipbattle.shtml ****************************************************************

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peering wars revisited? PSI vs Exodus
by Gordon Cook 05 Apr '00

05 Apr '00

surprised not to see this mentioned on NANOG >Sent: Friday, March 31, 2000 >To: Notify >Subject: Exodus Customer Confidential Communication > >Exodus Customer Confidential Communication > >Dear Exodus Customer, > >Exodus has been notified that PSI will be disconnecting the DS3 >connections that are in place between our networks at midnight PST Friday >3/31. At the time of the disconnect all connectivity to PSI networks will >be lost. This decision and action is being made unilaterally by PSINet and >against the request of Exodus. We continue to hope that PSI will work with >us. However, we are working on alternate methods of connectivity to PSI at >this time and hope to have a solution in place that will minimize the >impact to our customers. > >As always, should you have any questions please feel free to contact our >National Response Center at 1-877-393-7878. > >Respectfully, >Exodus Communications, Inc. >"The Internet Data Center Company" Web: http://www.exodus.net is this a replay of Exodus vs BBN? suppose you are a big dot com web site in an exodus data center and you are akamaized. are you going to notice a significant slow down in getting to PSI? I wouldn't think much....but if you aren't akamaized what kinds of problems do you have? Is PSI playing hardball with anyone else besides exodus? **************************************************************** The COOK Report on Internet Index to 8 years of the COOK Report 431 Greenway Ave, Ewing, NJ 08618 USA http://cookreport.com (609) 882-2572 (phone & fax) Battle for Cyberspace: How cook(a)cookreport.com Crucial Technical . . . - 392 pages just published. See http://cookreport.com/ipbattle.shtml ****************************************************************

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WCOM Newark, NJ fiber outage (under water)
by Sean Donelan 05 Apr '00

05 Apr '00

Worldcom is reporting a multiple fiber system outage between Dayton and Avenell, NJ. Techs are on site, but no ETR.

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Re: peering wars revisited? PSI vs Exodus
by Steven M. Bellovin 05 Apr '00

05 Apr '00

In message <4.3.1.0.20000405095254.00c2b7a0(a)george.he.net>, Shawn McMahon write s: > > At 01:11 AM 4/5/2000 -0400, you wrote: > > >the Internet? I don't think they tattoo 'Journalist' on your head > >when you get licenced, and I'd not trust a JPEG of a picture - it's > >too easy to fake with Photoshop. ;) > > You don't get licensed. > > Some folks mistake a "Press Pass" for a license, but here's how you get a > press pass: > > Somebody prints it and puts your name and, possibly, picture on it. > > Sometimes; when I was in radio, our press passes didn't even have > names. We just gave 'em to any of our journalists who needed them for a > specific event. Carried one a few times myself. They were professionally > printed with our logo, via a commercial printer who wasn't producing > anything that couldn't be done just as well on an HP Color Laserjet. Some > places printed theirs on cheap inkjets. > > A journalist is anybody who writes news stories. > > All of the above applies to the USA only. I can't speak for other > countries that may have funky methods of generating extra tax income by > requiring some kind of bizarre license to practice what is, in the US, > guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. > In general, you're right, but there are exceptions. At least in New York City circa 1972, the Police Department would issue press passes to "working journalists" -- and these were the only passes that would get you past police lines to cover a story. This was particularly grating to me, since I was a reporter for a college newspaper and I was trying to cover assorted demonstrations that had shut down my school and spilled over into the streets -- but college papers didn't count, as far as they were concerned... We did the best we could with home-made press badges, in the hope that this would give us some protection against having our heads cracked, and perhaps it did work. On the other hand, I don't remember taking the picture I snapped of the head of the Red Squad standing by while a uniformed riot officer clubbed a woman lying on the ground -- I was too busy running away from the police charge, just like everyone else... Anyway -- that experience gave me a strong dislike for any arbitrary attempt to define a "real" journalist. A journalist is as a journalist does -- and, whether you like the story or not, or like Cook or not, his decision to publish was completely in accord with the standards of his profession. --Steve Bellovin

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Another press article on PSI/Exodus
by Garlic 05 Apr '00

05 Apr '00

http://www.internetnews.com/isp-news/article/0,2171,8_334471,00.html An interesting quote is "Peering was no longer free with PSINet and they refused to exchange traffic at public access points. It's very unusual for someone to refuse to exchange traffic a public points," Hancock added.

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Please stop now
by smd＠clock.org 05 Apr '00

05 Apr '00

Hi - Everyone kindly stop contributing to the peering wars revisited? thread and its children. It is not on-topic for the list. Sean. (making his one and ONLY contribution to this conversation)

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Re: peering wars revisited? PSI vs Exodus
by Steven M. Bellovin 05 Apr '00

05 Apr '00

In message <200004050511.e355BQp31490(a)black-ice.cc.vt.edu>, Valdis.Kletnieks@vt .edu writes: > > On Tue, 04 Apr 2000 21:16:55 PDT, Ehud Gavron said: > > Your list of people below are already emailing me to > > say "no no, we just gave him info" > > > > You're not journalist. > > (I'm assuming here that Gordon starts off with "Hi, I'm Gordon Cook, > with the Cook Report", and not social-engineering with false names etc ;) > > Umm.. given the list of names for 1998 through 2000, and the fact that > I *know* that at least some of them were aware of what Gordon writes > when they gave him info, I think it's safe to conclude that at least > a good fraction of Gordon's listed sources were giving him information > fully aware of where it was going to end up. If you tell somebody info > knowing it's going into a well-publicized newsletter, you're talking to > a journalist. It may not be Tom Brokaw, but it's a journalist. ;) Absolutely. As one of the people Gordon interviewed, there was and is no doubt in my mind that he's a journalist. In fact, I know of no reasonable definition of the term that would exclude him -- he gathers information and publishes it. Yes, Gordon expresses opinions -- but the set "columnist" is a subset of the set "journalist". Yes, I (and many others on this list) often disagree with his viewpoint. So what? --Steve Bellovin

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Re: [nsp] IS-IS over IP?
by Danny McPherson 05 Apr '00

05 Apr '00

> I wasn't in Adelaide, but in earlier meetings, I had the impression > that there were at least some implementations using IPv4 as a > workaround both to lower layer specific problems (e.g., AAL SNAP/MUX) > as well as the hard MTU size limit due to lack of fragmentation > capability at the data link layer. I don't believe there were any meetings of the ISIS WG in Adelaide. I'm not aware of any implementations of ISIS over IPv4, much less in production networks. As for the MTU issue, most use maximum LSP size of 1492 bytes and even stop Hello padding after initialization. -danny

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