On Mon, 23 Jun 2003, Jim Deleskie wrote:
One router and it takes there entire network off-line... Maybe someone needs a Intro to Networks 101 class.
No matter what kind of technology or design you have there are always kinds of faults which may bring the entire system down. The problem is generally in recognizing when a fault has occured, so the the operation may be switched over to a backup. Particularly, the present Internet routing architecture is (mis)designed in such a way that it is incredibly easy for a local fault or human error to bring a significant portion of the network down. Even single-box _hardware_ faults may lead to global crashes. Long long time ago I had to track down a problem which made US and EU pretty much disconnected for several hours. This turned out to be a hardware problem in 7000's SSE card, which happily worked with packets originating and terminating in the router itself, but silently dropped all transit packets. Voila! Neighbour boxes were convinced that this one's working - because all routing protocols were happy, and were trying to send lots of traffic through it, which was simply going to a blackhole to the mighty annoyance of everyone. I've got a speeding ticket showing over 100mph on Dulles hwy at 3am, too, as a memento of rushing to DC with a spare card... So, in the absense of details, I would reserve judgement on soundness of design practices. --vadim