On Wed, 21 Aug 1996, Enke Chen wrote:
You forgot to point out that his evidence below indicates that this is an MCI problem in Washington. Besides the fact that Network Solutions isn't anyone's provider...
Let us be more careful here. The traceroute only indicates that the problem was with the hop after border7.wtn.mci.net. The traceroute simply does not contain sufficient information to pinpoint which party the next hop is.
Very true. That fact and the widespread use of assymetric return paths (as in this case) really makes it impossible to authoritatively diagnose who is at fault when a routing problem occurs merely by reading a few traceroutes. One thing that would help diagnose the true source of the problem with less human interaction required (avoiding voicemail and all that) would be wider public access to traceroutes beginning at key sites. There is a group of ISP's who make CGI-based traceroutes available from their sites at http://amazing.netaxs.com/internet/club-traceroute.html In this instance, it would have helped if the Internic had a CGI traceroute available from their site but I think it would also be a nice thing if the major NSP's would make this same kind of facility available from their exchange points. What do you folks think? Michael Dillon - ISP & Internet Consulting Memra Software Inc. - Fax: +1-604-546-3049 http://www.memra.com - E-mail: michael@memra.com