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Re: NSI bulletin 097-004 | Root Server Problems
by Darrell Fuhriman 17 Jul '97

17 Jul '97

randy(a)psg.com (Randy Bush) writes: > Gosh, Perry. I wish I could be as important when I grow up. when you do, please let us know how to configure our router for it. "Kettle, Pot... Pot, Kettle" Darrell

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contracts and damages, was: BOOM! there goes WorldCom
by William Allen Simpson 17 Jul '97

17 Jul '97

> From: Nathan Stratton <nathan(a)netrail.net> > I know this, I have a copy of the DLRs. What I am saying is Worldcom > changed the DLRs without letting us know, and now they all run over this > fiber cut. We request a copy of the DLRs on ALL our links. We started > this long ago when we had a MCI and Worldcom DS1 die because they went > over the same fiber. > OK, sounds like you exercized due diligence. What kind of contract language specified multiple paths for those 3 circuits you paid for? And how much liquidated damages for an outage did you specify? Could you please let us all know how long it takes for WorldCom to pay up? WSimpson(a)UMich.edu Key fingerprint = 17 40 5E 67 15 6F 31 26 DD 0D B9 9B 6A 15 2C 32 BSimpson(a)MorningStar.com Key fingerprint = 2E 07 23 03 C5 62 70 D3 59 B1 4F 5E 1D C2 C1 A2

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Multiple Topics - Fiber Routes, Diversity, and Sprint's name, and SONET
by Kent Dallas 17 Jul '97

17 Jul '97

This message contributes to the various strands of the thread created by "BOOM! there goes WorldCom". No Internic/DNS musings here. *** CONTENT RATINGS (on a 10 point scale) Operational Issues 3 DNS/Bind Issues 0 *** 1) Fiber Routes Essentially, there are four (soon to be five) nationwide fiber networks. Sprint built (or at least started) first, building fiber routes mostly along Southern Pacific RR right-of-way. In the process of their build, Microwave Communications Incorporated (MCI) and AT&T decided they better do the same. Shortly after Sprint was in progress, the communications division of the Williams Cos. (WilTel) had the brilliant idea to run fiber in abandoned oil/gas pipelines (no, they did not run fiber down ACTIVE oil/gas pipelines). Williams Co eventually sold (some or most?) of this asset to LDDS (and along with other acquisitions), now known as WorldCom, Inc. All of these players buy/sell/swap this fiber capacity between each other. Recently, there has been a bit of a bandwidth crunch (I hope I don't have to explain why to the folks on this list). Folks like Frontier had a little trouble finding the necessary bandwidth to fuel their facilities-based long distance business growth. Fed up with the limited supply and rising prices (ECON 101), Qwest saw an opportunity to "build" versus buy. They are proceeding to build the "fifth" nationwide fiber network. Underlying any company who advertises their "own" nationwide network, sits at least one of these providers. 2) Route Diversity Each of these carriers (or at least the first four) offer route diversity, for a premium price. If you order two circuits between the same locations, you may get lucky and have them provisioned across separate fiber routes. You can check this with the DLR. However, if you did not PAY for route diversity, the carrier may very well groom them at a later time into the same fiber path. Ocassionally, folks will pay for route diversity, and yet the carrier STILL grooms their circuits onto the same path (operations error, poor systems, or just plain bad faith). If you pay for diversity, and don't get it, THEN you have something to complain about (and a pretty good basis for credits, at least). Otherwise, network grooms are SOP for IXC network facilities management. Buying from two different carriers doesn't assure diversity, either. The second carrier may provision your service over the first carrier's facilities. Or, both carriers may share the conduit for their fiber run. When a carrier provisions your service over another carrier's facilities, there are likely to be coordination problems. How and if these issues get resolved is beyond me. 3) Sprint's name The Sprint we know today was basically created by the 50/50 joint venture between United Telecom and GTE, the two largest independent local telephone companies. United Telecom owned US Telecom, their long distance division. GTE had recently bought a low-cost long distance company from SP Communications, with which they formed GTE Sprint. The merger of these two groups formed US Sprint. Later, United bought another 30% of the joint venture, and later again, bought the whole company from GTE (which seems funny now, since it looks like GTE will be having to buy its way into the long distance business, again). Once United owned the whole company, United dropped the "US" of US Sprint, and renamed the entire corporation, Sprint (which is why all the local United Telephone companies are now Sprint). 4) SONET It is true that SONET technology provides the capability for protection from fiber cuts, with automatic reroutes along SONET loops. In order to accomplish this, a carrier would have to keep 50% of their available bandwidth on "hot standby". Because of the limited bandwidth supply/rising prices, carriers find this a bit difficult to justify economically (how many of you have 100% redundant facilities, and make money?). If your carrier sells you on the automatic service restoration qualities of their SONET deployment, you better get it in writing, and not just accept what the sales person tells you. That way, when your DS3 goes down, you'll at least have a bargaining position. The circuits that do reroute are priority circuits, and unless you are the federal government or Fortune 50, you are not likely priority. Happy packet passing, Kent Dallas GridNet International Pricing Manager http://www.gridnet.com 770.518.5346 770.998.9096.fax "Don't be a crash dummy on the kdallas(a)gridnet.com information superhighway"

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Worlcom Fiber Cut (Re: Sprint Outages)
by Mark E Larson 17 Jul '97

17 Jul '97

MFS Worldcom Fiber Cut WorldCom has experienced a fiber cut between Washington, D.C. and Baltimore, MD which is causing outages across multiple U.S. Backbones, in the Northeast United States. The fiber cut effected approx 533 DS-3's. According to Worldcom, it will take six hours to restore all the circuits. (happened approx 10:30am) Mark E Larson Senior Network Architect RUSTnet Engineering ----------------------------------------------- R U S T N E T I N C. A member of the Verio Group http://www.rust.net -----------------------------------------------

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Worlcom Fiber Cut (Re: Sprint Outages)
by Mark E Larson 17 Jul '97

17 Jul '97

MFS Worldcom Fiber Cut WorldCom has experienced a fiber cut between Washington, D.C. and Baltimore, MD which is causing outages across multiple U.S. Backbones, in the Northeast United States. The fiber cut effected approx 533 DS-3's. According to Worldcom, it will take six hours to restore all the circuits. (happened approx 10:30am) Mark E Larson Senior Network Architect RUSTnet Engineering ----------------------------------------------- R U S T N E T I N C. A member of the Verio Group http://www.rust.net -----------------------------------------------

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Washington DC outage (fwd)
by Eric Wieling 17 Jul '97

17 Jul '97

Just got this from Sprint. > Date: Thu, 17 Jul 1997 08:56:40 -0400 (EDT) > From: Outage Poster <postout(a)sprint.net> > Subject: Washington DC outage > > 7/17/97 09:10 EDT > > We currently have 280 DS-3's down in our Washington DC relay site due to > a fiber cut. Customers connect to our DC routers will experience routing > instabilities and delays. We are working to resolve this problem...no ETR > is available at this time. We will send a follow-up message to update > this problem. We apologize for any inconvenience that this may have > caused. Thank you for your patience.

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Re: NSI bulletin 097-004 | Root Server Problems
by Carl Oppedahl 17 Jul '97

17 Jul '97

At 11:14 AM 07/17/97 PDT, Randy Bush wrote: >> Despite alarms raised by Network Solutions' quality assurance schemes, at >> approximately 2:30 a.m. (Eastern Time), a system administrator released >> the zone file without regenerating the file and verifying its integrity. > >You allow mere humans to affect the process on which the whole net relies? >Oh my gawd! I demand my money back! :-) > >But seriously. Thanks for the explanation, David. These things happen, >though rarely, one hopes. We all kinda wonder, but don't want to add to >the problem by calling, whining, ... > >Shall we have a gaffe of the week contest, this week's major entries being >this one and probably MAE-West/MFS? We could call it the Metcalf award. >But, David, please don't emulate the competiton by doing it twice. :-) Well, what would make it tough is if there were a gaffe of the month contest, because that would be NSI competing with itself. Recall that problem of a couple of weeks ago where NSI fiddled with its FTP access permissions and made it impossible for the root servers to obtain the root file ... a mistake that, like this one, was detected first by persons outside of NSI, and only hours later did NSI make any public acknowledgement of the mistake.

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RE: BOOM! there goes WorldCom
by Todd Wilkens 17 Jul '97

17 Jul '97

All the fiber that was Wiltel went with the sale to LDDS. There was a portion of Wiltel that was not sold to LDDS and that was Vyvx. Williams retained the Wiltel name and I believe Vyvx is now called Wiltel and is still part of the Williams Companies out of Tulsa. I believe part of the sale agreement was that Williams retained one fiber strand out of every fiber run Wiltel (the original one) had. So Williams (Wiltel) still has alot of fiber capacity. >---------- >From: Peter Leppik[SMTP:pleppik@mail.wessels.com] >Sent: Thursday, July 17, 1997 10:05 AM >To: 'johnl(a)iecc.com' >Cc: 'nanog(a)merit.edu' >Subject: RE: BOOM! there goes WorldCom > >I was relying on an article which crossed my desk a few weeks ago, and >now I can't find it again. My apologies if my memory failed me; it >wouldn't be the first time. > >>-----Original Message----- >>From: johnl(a)iecc.com [SMTP:johnl@iecc.com] >>Sent: Wednesday, July 16, 1997 8:43 PM >>To: Peter Leppik >>Subject: Re: BOOM! there goes WorldCom >> >>>carriers. Qwest also bought a boatload of fiber from Williams Pipeline >>>Co. some time ago, and signed a contract with Williams which locked >>>Williams out of the business of deploying new fiber until early 1998 >>>(Williams runs fiber through unused oil and gas pipelines, having >>>discovered that fiber optics is more of a growth industry than >>>schlepping around fermented dinosaurs). >> >>That is most bizarre. Williams has been in the fiber business for >>ages, their fiber subsidiary was Wiltel which was the 4th or 5th >>largest IXC by volume (mostly resold to other carriers) when it was >>sold and merged into LDDS/Worldcom in early 1995. Are you saying that >>after they spun off Wiltel, Williams went back into the fiber >>stringing business? >> >>-- >>John R. Levine, IECC, POB 640 Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 387 6869 >>johnl(a)iecc.com, Village Trustee and Sewer Commissioner, >>http://iecc.com/johnl, >>Finger for PGP key, f'print = 3A 5B D0 3F D9 A0 6A A4 2D AC 1E 9E A6 36 >A3 >>47 >

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Re: DNS ideas
by Alex Rubenstein 17 Jul '97

17 Jul '97

Why? At 11:42 AM 7/17/97 -0400, Marc Hurst wrote: > >Sounds like eDNS... and that model does work IMHO. > >On Thu, 17 Jul 1997, Alex Rubenstein wrote: > >> >> With all this craziness in DNS land lately (the internic going nutz, the >> root domains wigging this morning, etc.), I had come up with on the >> craziest thoguhts I think I ever thunk (!!). Anyway, what about a >> structure like this: >> >> >> 1) Root domain name server operators (RDNSO) -- a selected 10 or 15 people --- "Don't go with a spineless ISP; we have more backbone." Alex Rubenstein -- alex(a)nac.net -- KC2BUO -- www.nac.net net @ccess corporation, 201-983-0725 -- 201-983-0725

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Re: mae-la
by Jay R. Ashworth 17 Jul '97

17 Jul '97

On Wed, Jul 16, 1997 at 08:42:53PM -0700, Bill Manning wrote: > > A bit pointed, perhaps, but even from an engineering standpoint, that's > > not a sentiment I'd expect from anyone who wasn't a WorldCom employee. > > Certainly, it would make more sense _to UUNET_ to have people who want > > to peer become their clients, instead; but that's not the _point_ of > > peering, is it? > > Why? Because perhaps I see WorldCom dumping cash into its UUnet arm and > terminating all but one of its MAE support staff? No, but if that's true, it's even more reason not to give UUnet any money one doesn't have to. > Or perhaps because I and Lance are keeping WorldCom "honest" by providing > alternatives for MAE-WEST and MAE-LA clients? Or do you have another reason > why WorldCom is not more active in building up its MAE business? I don't know, nor care, why they aren't, but peering with them is a different business case than becoming their customer, by a long shot, and it ought to remain different. > I really don't care what WorldCom does with its MAE or UUnet business. I'm > more interested in ensuring a cost effective means for ISPs local to LA have > a neutral place to swap bits. If folks can make bucks using this service, > great. Just as long as they don't impede the R&E work that goes on. _That's_ the attitude I want to see. It's "just a business" for WOrldCom nowadays, as far as I can see. They trashed WilTel, which was an engineering-drive company with a great technical reputation, and they appear to be doing the same to UUnet. > I'd like to continue to trade inuendo, but I have more interesting things > to do. Perhaps if you end up in LA, you might have an opportunity to > make a choice about LAP/MAE-LA. And we might have to consider if we want > your custom. But until then, for you, its a moot point. Wasn't innuendo for innuendo's sake; your comment simply didn't appear to have any reasonable motivation. Your assertion appeared to be, and correct me if I'm wrong, "why would backbone operators want to have the MAE to peer with UUNET (and others) at, when they could simply become UUNET customers, and let UUNET deal [poorly --jra] with the problems?" If that's not an accurate perception of your intentions, perhaps you could clarify. Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth jra(a)baylink.com Member of the Technical Staff Unsolicited Commercial Emailers Sued The Suncoast Freenet "People propose, science studies, technology Tampa Bay, Florida conforms." -- Dr. Don Norman +1 813 790 7592

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