On Mon, 21 Oct 1996, Billy Biggs wrote:
Looking for opinions here: Do I have the right, as a citizen of the internet, to phone up the NOC of another major provider to solve packet loss through their routers?
You should talk to your provider who should try resolution of problem with the provider in question.
Exactly. Hierarchy is mandatory at this level, both for the physical network, and for the logical structure of customers, ISP's, and NSP's.
This is the only scalable way for this to work. Having various folks call up NOCs for various problem is pretty close to a nightmare scenario for someone who is concerned with NOC staffing and response time.
It simply means that social filters become required, in much the same way that packet filters, and route filters are now becoming standard on any well-connected network.
The fact that this approach may current not work well means that we should fix the inter-provider cooperation, rather then routing around it by having end users call NOCs of providers.
Agreed. End users should never be calling outside their ISP; it is NOT their place to solve problems for their ISP, for multiple reasons, one of which is that if any of our customers worked directly with MCI, for example, to solve a problem they saw that we were not yet aware of, and they and MCI solved the issue without involving us, we'd have no realization that a problem had been developing. We'd much rather have our customers talk to US if they feel a problem is developing, let us analyze the issue, and contact the parties we feel are most appropriate. In this way, we know what changes were made, and why, and we have a history to refer to later. If we simply show up, and find that a peering session has been turned off, or that a specific IP block has been re-advertised through a secondary link to try to shift routing, we have no background, no history of why that change might have been made if it has been a private effort between an individual and another ISP. Communication THROUGH the hierarchy is essential if changes are to be maintained and supported. Otherwise, we'll all be working against each other, trying to second guess and bypass each other's efforts.
If this happened, I wouldn't be surprised to see NOC phone numbers becoming semi secret or requiring authentication.
Ask for the customer number, or for the contact info/callback number if it's another ISP. We've found that in the case if the semi-clueless end user, asking for a customer number is enough to get them to confess that they're not really one of OUR customers. Those who try to bluff their way past don't usually make it past the "can I have your callback number and contact info" if they try to pretend to be calling representing a neighboring ISP's NOC. This is what I mean by "social filters"; it's rather like an access list, only not quite so strict. By imposing enough of a barrier that only those who know what they're doing will pass the test, you limit the random interruptions and noise that would otherwise bog you down, and cause trouble. *grin* It's almost like having to give your driver's license number to prove you're an adult. Maybe we need NANOG to issue "Clue Factor License Numbers" to network engineers and NOC employees that we can read off to each other when we call as one ISP/NSP to another... :-) well, enough random blathering, back to the grind.
-dorian
Matt Petach doing his best to NOT respond to any of the original rantings...