At 04:31 PM 9/18/97 -0400, Sean M. Doran wrote:

Perhaps you could explain to me how you can find the shortest path between A and B using ping times, traceroute hop counts, and AS_PATHS observed at C, assuming that traffic between A and B is not exchanged through C?

You're not trying to find it between A and B. A connects to B, but B has every intention of redirecting to C1, C2, or C3, etc. If B can communicate with some measurement tool on Cx, they can all report back on their "connectivity" to A. B can then redirect A to the "best" Cx node. If the results are inconclusive, round robin it. If B had knowledge of BGP and AS's, maybe it wouldn't have to decide on distance but instead search for a Cx which was nearest to B in the AS_PATH. The premise being it may be better to pick a Cx nearest me in my upstream, as opposed to driving it through some overloaded exchange point. Granted, ping tends to get dropped on the floor at overloaded points, and traceroute probably isn't a) too much better b) probably blocked in some (most) cases, but are there any better alternatives? Anyone know of some reasonably available methods for measuring end to end "performance" which are almost universally implemented? Kind of making do with what we have. #Included junk

From Network World

Olympic effort could be much more ------------------------------------------------------------------------ By Marc Myers 07/29/96 If you, like me, are among the six million people that have succumbed to the temptation of visiting IBM's Olympics Web site (http://www. atlanta.olympic.org), don't feel bad for having wasted company time. Just tell your boss that you are reviewing one of the most phenomenal technological feats of the decade: a worldwide network constructed in just 15 months. The project - though it has run into some technical snags during the early going - demonstrates how much can be accomplished when an immutable deadline is accompanied by a virtually unlimited budget. IBM provided a $40 million sponsorship, but the company's actual expenses probably exceeded $1 billion. The Internet setup utilizes two primary RS/6000 SP2 multiprocessing servers, one of which hums away on 52 processors in Southbury, Conn., while its buddy chugs along on 16 processors in Hawthorne, N.Y. Mirror servers run in Asia, Europe and the U.S. IBM developed new load-balancing software as part of its Web Object Manager that optimizes traffic, automatically finding and tapping the most available servers. Other aspects of the system - including the Global Shared Data Center - are so secret that we don't even know where they operate from. For surfers who are into the Olympics, the services offered are superlative: You can get game results almost as fast as the major networks, download images and flicks of the world's greatest athletes and shop for official Olympic products. But what I find most appealing about this system is that it was built so quickly and with such creativity. What if IBM decided that this was something that could be done more than once? [snip ...] ============================================================================ ==== Eric Germann Computer and Communications Technologies ekgermann@cctec.com Van Wert, OH 45891 Phone: 419 968 2640 http://www.cctec.com Fax: 419 968 2641 Network Design, Connectivity & System Integration Services A Microsoft Solution Provider