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Operations training materials
by Michael Dillon 23 Apr '95

23 Apr '95

On Sun, 23 Apr 1995 elliot(a)ghost.uunet.ca wrote: > On Sat, 22 Apr 1995, Michael Dillon wrote: > >Right now it is possible for each new operations person at a new ISP to > >hunt through all the RFC's for relevant documents, look through the IETF > >mailing lists for relevant lists and then hunt through those lists for > >relevant messages, etc.... However, it would be far more efficient to > >have one technically skilled researcher do this and distill the important > >info for the rest of us. > > Ah, so you want someone else to do your homework for you? Not for me, I've done my homework. Unfortunately, I no longer have many of the "texbooks" nor a coherent record of all my sources of info so if I wanted to train another person it would be like reinventing the wheel. :-( > I believe that the general feeling in the Internet community that it's > essential not only to have such information, but also to be able to > understand the sources from which the information is derived; following > the IETF mailing lists and understanding relevant RFCs is part of what > makes a "good" operator. Agreed. This is the beauty of publishing tutorial materials on the Web; you can have direct links to the RELEVANT source materials including the important IETF lists and list archives. > The Internet is constantly changing, and in order to keep up, an operator > *must* understand new RFCs and mailing list discussion *as they occur*. > There's no time to wait for some to write a book simplifying things for you... Not a book, more like a table of contents with introductory summaries. Consider that most new ISP's don't even know what IETF is, don't know what NANOG is, have never heard of BGP, etc.... They may have experience with UNIX and TCP/IP Lan's or with BBSes and I have come across more than a few who have little more than DOS experience. These people are LOOKING for a book to help them but there are no such books. They are looking for a newsgroup to help them but there are no such newsgroups. They are even looking for a mailing list, but there is no single mailing list that covers what you need to know. Given that a WWW site as I have envisioned did exist, those who know would have a quick and easy answer to all operational questions. "Go and read the stuff at http://...... and then if you need to know more, ask me." Michael Dillon Voice: +1-604-549-1036 Network Operations Fax: +1-604-542-4130 Okanagan Internet Junction Internet: michael(a)junction.net http://www.junction.net - The Okanagan's 1st full-service Internet provider

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Re: Has PSI been assigned network 1?
by Vadim Antonov 23 Apr '95

23 Apr '95

Bill Manning wrote: >Even with a route registry, you have no way of knowing, apriora, that >the registration is correct. There have already been "helpful" attempts >to register information for others w/o their consent. Yep. >In general, it depends on religious registration in whois and/or rwhois, >the distributed IRR and PGP. Here is a brief summary: > Basically, I have made a proposal to have the Internic set an > example by registering all delegations in whois/RWhois and > signing the delegation. > All down-stream ISPs should do the same (register delegations > in RWhois and sign any downstream delegations) > When a custodian wishes to register a delegation for routing, > they sign the request. There is a MUCH simplier solution. First, use DNS instead of centralized WHOIS database. DNS already has IN-ADDR.ARPA zones with PTR RRs and it is nothing to add TXT RRs with contact etc information. Delegation of authority is done the same way as it's done with IN-ADDR zones. The mechanism is in place and works. InterNIC delegates /8 or /16 zones to providers, providers delegate /16s and /24s to other providers or customers. Since end-users will keep their contact information in their primary servers, right on premises, the likelihood of it being up-to-date is much higher -- simply because every time the LAN administrator will add or remove a host he'll see it. --vadim

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Re: Has PSI been assigned network 1?
by Vadim Antonov 23 Apr '95

23 Apr '95

No, the problem is that operational people only about 50% native English speakers, and most hate writing :) I keep buzzing our management that we need a good technical writer to put engineering knowledge into undesrstandable English. --vadim From: salo(a)msc.edu (Tim Salo) Date: Sun, 23 Apr 1995 00:17:37 -0500 To: G.Huston(a)aarnet.edu.au Subject: Re: Has PSI been assigned network 1? Cc: nanog(a)merit.edu > From: Geoff Huston <G.Huston(a)aarnet.edu.au> > Subject: Re: Has PSI been assigned network 1? > To: michael(a)okjunc.junction.net > Date: Sat, 22 Apr 1995 18:00:09 +1000 (EST) > Cc: nanog(a)merit.edu, rps(a)isi.edu > [...] > After some years being associated with the IEPG the observation I have > to make is that the operations folk who really do understand how the > Internet is glued together are way too busy keeping it strung together > to do anything else. > [...] So, the operational folks are too busy to transfer their knowledge to new recruits (who might actually help them keep the Net running), and then the experienced operational folks wonder why they are so busy? Something doesn't seem quite right with this picture... -tjs

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Re: Operations training materials
by geoffw＠nexsys.net 23 Apr '95

23 Apr '95

> On Sat, 22 Apr 1995, Randy Bush wrote: > > > > Not for me, I've done my homework. Unfortunately, I no longer have > > > many of the "texbooks" nor a coherent record of all my sources of info > > > so if I wanted to train another person it would be like reinventing the > > > wheel. :-( > > > > Well then. Money meet mouth, mouth money. Jeez! > > Look Randy, this thread started out with people from Sprint and ANS? > talking about the efforts involved in getting new operations people on > stream and pointing out that they simply couldn't provide any training > for their new ISP customers. > > What I'm trying to point out is that there is more than one way to skin a > cat, i.e. writing a tutorial for the WWW is a far more cost effective > training tool than trying to do one-on-one with each new ISP that signs > on. My perspective is that of someone who has just climbed most of the > steepest part of the learning curve and who has noticed that many of my > peers (new ISP's) haven't got a clue and don't know where to find the info. > > I point them at http://www.isoc.org, http://www.merit.edu, > http://www.ripe.net and http://www.internic.net but they still have to go > rooting around in there looking for the key items in a mass of > information that is of lesser utility. There is no map! The source > documents are nice to have, but without a map you don't even know if you > are looking at the right ones! OK folks, I'll step to the plate (sorta :) I'll host the site on my website (v-site.net) and act as the co-ordinator, evaluator, since I haven't climbed completely out of the learning curve I should be a good evaluator :) Currently I'm reading this book called "Routing on the Internet" by Christian Huitema, it's not bad and will explain Interior Routing Protocols pretty well, it even has a chapter on "policy based routing" but obviously it is incomplete, still It's a start. If you send me URL's and other bit's of advice, I'll try to organize it into a coherent browseable mass. geoffw

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Re: Has PSI been assigned network 1?
by salo＠msc.edu 23 Apr '95

23 Apr '95

> From: Geoff Huston <G.Huston(a)aarnet.edu.au> > Subject: Re: Has PSI been assigned network 1? > To: michael(a)okjunc.junction.net > Date: Sat, 22 Apr 1995 18:00:09 +1000 (EST) > Cc: nanog(a)merit.edu, rps(a)isi.edu > [...] > After some years being associated with the IEPG the observation I have > to make is that the operations folk who really do understand how the > Internet is glued together are way too busy keeping it strung together > to do anything else. > [...] So, the operational folks are too busy to transfer their knowledge to new recruits (who might actually help them keep the Net running), and then the experienced operational folks wonder why they are so busy? Something doesn't seem quite right with this picture... -tjs

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Re: Has PSI been assigned network 1?
by Vadim Antonov 22 Apr '95

22 Apr '95

>at least two problems with this approach: >- delegation does not imply announcement or reachability > DNS registration should -NOT- do the same, but it does. Only if DNS is mis-configured. One more incentive for people to keep their DNS working? >- People thus far have not been willing to deploy the segmentation > needed to split DNS delegations along CIDR bounds. Until then > we are "stuck" with classful alignments in DNS. It is not critical, because the IN-ADDR zones work like that anyway. Although i agree that fixing DNS in that respect would be helpful. >- This was considered and abandoned as another attempt to overload > the DNS. Oh, c'mon. "Purity of idea" crap again. TXT RRs were introduced specifically for that purpose. >The flaw in this approach is that the top level delegation point >can always override any downstream delegation point. (can you say >restraint of trade? Sure you can..) Depends on point of view. I would say it IS desireable. Then, as any lawyer would say you if you disallow Internet service providers asking for renumbering you'll have to shut down telephones first. There is a very strong case that renumbering in communication nbetworks is an accepted practice. (Can you say ISDN or X.25/X.121 or Frame Relay)? >It will be stronger when we get SIG RR's and dynamic update. >Perhaps we can revive it? Yeah, sure. --vadim

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(3) rouge /8 nets
by bmanning＠ISI.EDU 22 Apr '95

22 Apr '95

> > Sorry to be a late-comer, but I seem to have missed the actual *point* > of this continuing soap opera. Could someone fill me in? > > Thanks, > > Dale > -- It started out with someone noticing that a reserved network was being announced by a specific provider. It went from there. Of course no-one is complaining about the other three -reserved- /8 nets that are being advertized. Anyone care to trace down the culprits on the following nets: 7.0.0.0 100.0.0.0 101.0.0.0 -- --bill

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Re: Has PSI been assigned network 1?
by Sean Doran 22 Apr '95

22 Apr '95

Karl, since you hate Sprint's service so much, why not simply drop Sprint as a carrier and make yourself and everyone else much happier? Sean.

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Re: Has PSI been assigned network 1?
by Vadim Antonov 22 Apr '95

22 Apr '95

>> A half of them has to be explained how route announcement >> is different from broadcasting. Forget about good >> citizenship -- they may be willing but they must be >> educated first. >> [...] >Educated by whom? >It seems to me that this education is one of the services that small >ISPs ought to expect of their national service providers. Huh? Where did you see "education" in terms of service contracts? If a person goes in the business it is assumed that (s)he knows the profession. It is certainly not the case for many US-based Internet service providers. The problem is that even a tiniest service provider doing BGP with some bigger provider can kill most of the Internet by injecting a single bogus route. (I expect to hear more "RS will fix everything" speech at this point. Relax. It is not here yet; and we had occasions when bogus routes were killing ANS connectivity per-network filtering notwithstanding. There are bugs and interesting incompatibilities :). Such service provider doing multi-homed trick is simply a walking disaster. That's why we're making sure all parties involved understand the routing policy, safe networking practices, etc before we enable BGP. >Conversely, it seems that the rest of the community ought to expect >that national service providers will be responsible for educating >their customers, (e.g., ISPs). Sounds kind of over-expectant. Considering that even large service providers have real bad problems with finding engineers who know what they are doing. The best we can do is to limit the damage by doing fascistic filtering, and work with those ISPs who want to listen and really want to learn. Others will be out of business earlier or later anyway. --vadim

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Re: Config Run on Sunday, April 23 1000EDT
by phuston＠nsf.gov 21 Apr '95

21 Apr '95

Let me add the appreciation of NSF to that from Elise to all of you who have been taking independent and proactive actions to help assure a smooth transition both for your regions and others. Thank you. Priscilla Huston At 10:19 PM 4/21/95, Elise Gerich wrote: >Merit has rescheduled the configuration run which was postponed on >Friday, April 21, 1995 for Sunday, April 23 at 1000 EDT. The originally >scheduled configuration window was postponed because the configuration >file for ENSS 147 (MAE-East) exceeded 17MB and was corrupt. We had >to allocate more filesystem space in order to generate a complete >configuration and in addition we worked with ASes 293, 297, 568, >1800 and 3561 to reduce the number of net lists contained in the >configuration file. The result is a configuration file of a more >reasonable size (9.9MB). > >The additional activity which was planned for April 21, 1995 was >to disable peering sessions between AS 690 and others at the following >ENSSes: >128 >129 >130 >131 >132 >133 >134 >135 >137 >139 >140 >141 >142 >143 >145 >This activity has been rescheduled for 0700 EDT on Tuesday, April 25, 1995. >Several organizations have taken the initiative to reduce their dependence >on the NSFNET Service even though we had to postpone the planned configuration >today. Thank you all for taking those actions independently. > > --Elise Priscilla Jane Huston Program Director of the NSFNET Program National Science Foundation Voice: (703)306-1949 or (713)527-4007 4201 Wilson Blvd Fax: (703) 306-0621 Arlington, VA 22230 Internet: phuston(a)nsf.gov or pjh(a)rice.edu

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