In a message written on Thu, Oct 06, 2005 at 06:36:00PM -0400, Lamar Owen wrote:
All philosophy aside, it does bother me that a simple single depeering can cause such an uproar in a network supposedly immune to nuclear war (even though the Internet was not designed from the start to survive nuclear war;
I point you back a few weeks to when the hurricane hit. You need look no further to see people offering up their assistance to those in need. Look back further to 9-11, and people offering networking help to those who's infrastructure was damaged.
In both of those cases, how much core infrastructure was damaged? (I've read the threads on this list (with interest, particularly some of the comments about many core paths from Atlanta to Houston not tranisting NOLA), and have read the archives of several lists on the earlier event; when the backbone providers want to do so, they can cooperate very nicely. When they don't want to do so, it gets ugly). If a tornado took out a major peering point, that would be different.
I have no doubt that if the Level 3 / Cogent issue had been caused by a pre-emptive nuclear strike and the nation was called to arms that virtually every ISP that connects to both would be offering them free transit to get them reconnected.
Yes, you would be correct. Which offers an interesting thought: why would it be important for you then but not now? If the issue impacts your customers, then why not spend the 3 minutes reconfiguring your router(s)? (obviously, if it doesn't impact your customers, then ignore that).
Indeed, I could log into my routers now and fix the Cogent / Level 3 problem with about 3 minutes of typing. It would cost my company thousands of dollars to do so, so I'm not going to do it.
In other words, this problem is a problem simply because people can't be bothered to fix the problem because it's just a customer service issue, and not 'helping out fellow backbone providers?' Shades of the old backbone cabal here. (yes, a healthy dose of cynicism there)
As I said before, right now this is a business problem.
Absolutely. But who's business? Hint: the two parties involved aren't the only ones with a business stake in this issue. Of course, I'm not telling you something you don't already know.
I've got a new set of rules to add to this thread:
If you don't have enable on a router, and you've never negotiated peering with a transit free ISP then you're not qualified to comment.
Again, shades of the old backbone cabal. How do you know that I have neither? I have both, in fact, even though the negotiations for the SFI didn't pan out due to regulated carrier issues (after all, one must arrange transit to a peering point, and, while I have the Cisco 12000's sitting here, they are here and not there).
You really don't understand what's going on here, and it's not, I repeat, not a technical problem.
Of course. I fully understand that. There is nothing wrong with the
technology, architecture, or anything else. There is something wrong with the business model of one, or both of these companies.
There is something very wrong with the whole business if two players' business models and business decisions can make this much of an uproar. When other businesses won't help their customers see the illusion of it being fixed, something is wrong. That's why you multihome in the first place. And if you have customers, and you are single-homed, your business plan stinks anyway. That goes for content consumer as well as content producer customers. But you are very right; it is not a technical problem and never was. Why? Because technical problems don't typically take this long to fix, and, as you said, if enough people cared enough this could easily be a nonissue. Aside: love the domain name, Leo. -- Lamar Owen Director of Information Technology Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute 1 PARI Drive Rosman, NC 28772 (828)862-5554 www.pari.edu