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Re: OUTAGE: MCI/Worldcom frame-relay network
by Sean Donelan 10 Aug '99

10 Aug '99

SEAN(a)dra.COM (Sean Donelan) writes: >I'm trying to post no more than once in 12 hours. Its been another twelve hours. Although I don't like all the red on our network map, it is showing how resiliant IP protocols are. My core network uses several different facility providers and technologies, and for those customers who have more than one connection: IP works. How else could I send this e-mail? However, for customers with only one connection, they don't really care how many other connections are working. They only care about their one connection. MCI/Worldcom claims 75% up their frame-relay network is 'up.' This is down from their previous claim on Friday that 90% of the frame-relay network was 'up.' We still see a number of PVCs throughout the US and Canada either completely down, or dropping so many frames as to be unusable. I received similar reports from other MCI/Worldcom frame-relay users throughout the US and even as far away as Germany. To try to figure out what is going on MCI/Worldcom imposed a 'quiet time' on their network, telling their engineers to stop touching things. This helped somewhat. Portions of the network stabilized on its own, but there is still massive congestion. The quiet time is over. Now MCI/Worldcom is trying to reduce the congestion by disconnecting parts of the frame-relay network. Remember this is Sunday, normally a low-traffic day. Monday is underway in Europe, and will be hitting the East Coast of the USA soon. Traffic levels are going to increase on the network, assuming any traffic can get through at all. MCI/Worldcom's web site continues its long silence about this outage. I've got to hand it to MCI/Worldcom; its engineers may have trouble keeping a frame-relay network going, but its PR department has done a great job keeping a lid on the story. Even MCI/Worldcom customers can't find out what is happening. -- Sean Donelan, Data Research Associates, Inc, St. Louis, MO Affiliation given for identification not representation

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Re: OUTAGE: MCI/Worldcom frame-relay network
by Sean Donelan 10 Aug '99

10 Aug '99

wb8foz(a)nrk.COM (David Lesher) writes: >Where exactly is this mention on the UUnet page? > >I have yet to find it.... It is normally on http://www.noc.uu.net/ However there seems to be some time-related procedure (cron ?) which clears off 'old' information after a few hours. Since it happened at exactly 12:00, 18:00, I'm assuming some automated procedure. UUNET usually adds the comment back to the page later. Depending on exactly when you look, it may not have been there. -- Sean Donelan, Data Research Associates, Inc, St. Louis, MO Affiliation given for identification not representation

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Re: OUTAGE: MCI/Worldcom frame-relay network
by David Lesher 10 Aug '99

10 Aug '99

Where exactly is this mention on the UUnet page? I have yet to find it.... -- A host is a host from coast to coast.................wb8foz(a)nrk.com & no one will talk to a host that's close........[v].(301) 56-LINUX Unless the host (that isn't close).........................pob 1433 is busy, hung or dead....................................20915-1433

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Frame relay outage
by Tatsuya Kawasaki 09 Aug '99

09 Aug '99

I understand since last Thursday, there is frame rely major? outage in WorldCom. Does anyhone have input on this ??? Tatsuya /_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ Tatsuya Kawasaki KIVEX.com Unlock the Power of the Internet URL:www.KIVEX.com Phone 301.215.6777 Fax 301.215.5991 /_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

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Re: What frame relay switch is causing MCI/Worldcom such grief?
by smd＠clock.org 09 Aug '99

09 Aug '99

Vijay - | Traffic flows change faster than the topology in most cases. So, in other words TE is a hack to make up for people's weaknesses in forecasting that leads one into a connectivity graph where the normally-selected logical path between two points is insufficient for the amount of traffic one wants to shuffle between ingress and egress? "Our forecast horizon is shorter than our planning cycle, so therefore we need TE" is probably the most real argument I've run into so far for doing TE, but it's so terribly sad that this is the case. Again, again, again, just like so many other times in the past. The other "compelling reason" I've run into for TE/MPLS is that it allows some people to close the book on the ATM-switch-in-the-middle-of-a- cluster-of-7[05]xx-es hack that was done in response to another famous underprediction of growth about which the people who seem most in favour of MPLS seem the most unforgiving. Ironic, isn't it? | Traffic measurements from end to end (per city flows) are also | easier to measure with the city to city pipe as it were. Uhm, think about that carefully before you declare it a compelling reason - step 1: sort traffic into categories that group together combinations of the 5-tuple, step 2: count this traffic. Possible implementation: add column to FIB table which is of the type struct counter { long long bytes; long long packets } * When a packet matches the FIB row, forward according to directives in the other columns, and then do: FIBLINE.counter->packets++; FIBLINE.counter->bytes += packet_length; Add glue to allow the FIB-creation-system to assign a particular counter per FIB entry, and some stuff to allow for the nice extraction of this information. One might even put it like this "show interface POS 0/1 quasi-vc <identifier>", which should show you a pretty printed summary of what the relevant counter structure contains. In other words, if extracting information about aggregate traffic flows is the means by which someone justifies deploying a pseudo- circuit-switched network like MPLS, I believe the problem lies in poor communications skills when communicating one's needs to one's vendor(s). Sean.

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clinton creates internet study group (and police force?)
by Ehud Gavron 09 Aug '99

09 Aug '99

text of the EO: http://www.usnewswire.com/topnews/Current_Releases/0807-107.htm One analysis: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/bluesky_btl/19990809_xcbtl_clinton_co.shtml Ehud

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Re: What frame relay switch is causing MCI/Worldcom such grief?
by Vadim Antonov 09 Aug '99

09 Aug '99

> So I guess that means you know more than all those smart people (on > both the service provider side and equipment side) who are helping > incorporate lessons from Frame Relay and ATM circuit routing into > MPLS? Yep. I can put together two and two and get four. I'm not going to read yet another lecture on computational complexity of adaptive circuit routing but so far nobody figured out a way to make it work in a network comparable to the current Internet in size. That's why nobody is even attempting to do MPLS or whatever across IXPs and only do in in the interior (actually this is also misguided, but for different reasons, having more to do with implementation complexity). BTW, a good many smart people who actually built the biggest chunks of the Internet backbone and the software which keeps it running share my opinion. In any case, the argument that million lemmings cant be all wrong is particularly hilarious. The issue of virtual circuit vs per-hop routing was discussed extensively in this forum years ago (in ATM vs IP context) and the consensus was pretty much against ATM. I would advise you to review the archives and see for yourself. Since there were no dramatic advances in either understanding of the problem, circuit-routing algorithms, or basic computing technology (well, the quantum computing can concievably solve the computablibity problem for circuit routing, but not any time soon :) i see little reason to start the arguments all over again. Of course, you may have something really new to say on the topic, but i would check that that wasn't already beaten to death. Regards, --vadim

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Re: What frame relay switch is causing MCI/Worldcom such grief?
by smd＠clock.org 09 Aug '99

09 Aug '99

| So I guess that means you know more than all those smart people (on | both the service provider side and equipment side) who are helping | incorporate lessons from Frame Relay and ATM circuit routing into | MPLS? Yes. Sean.

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Re: What frame relay switch is causing MCI/Worldcom such grief?
by Vadim Antonov 09 Aug '99

09 Aug '99

Prabhu -- a particluar implementation does not matter when the underlying idea is bad. Any circuit routing for data is broken-as-designed. (BTW, the irrelevance of the particulars is why i omitted attribution in the first place. This was a comment on the general state of affairs, not on the situation. Thanks for providing details, though). --vadim >From: Prabhu Kavi <prabhu_kavi(a)tenornetworks.com> >Vadim, >Your response is unrelated to the message I replied to, which >asked about the link state algorithm that Cascade uses. >As far as I know, nobody has announced which set of MCI Wordlcom's >switches were responsible for their outage. Since MCI Worldcom >uses multiple types in their network, statements like "goes as >predicted - complexity bites" is irresponsible at best, even if it >is later determined the Cascade switches were actually the cause >of the outage. >Prabhu

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OUTAGE: MCI/Worldcom frame-relay network
by Sean Donelan 09 Aug '99

09 Aug '99

MCI/Worldcom's frame-relay network has been experiencing serious problems for the last six hours or so. Originally thought to be an upgrade gone bad, now the cause is unknown. MCI/Worldcom is in the process of shutting down and rebuilding different switches one-by-one. It is unknown when the network will stabilize. -- Sean Donelan, Data Research Associates, Inc, St. Louis, MO Affiliation given for identification not representation

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