RE: Faster 'Net growth rate raises fears about routers
From: Sean Donelan [mailto:sean@donelan.com] Sent: Tuesday, April 03, 2001 5:26 AM
On Mon, 02 April 2001, Roeland Meyer wrote:
From the article: <quote> "Half of the companies that are multihomed should have gotten better service from their providers," says Patrik Faltstrom, a Cisco engineer and co-chair of the IETF's Applications Area. "ISPs haven't done a good enough job explaining to their customers that they don't need to multihome." </quote>
Why would a rational customer pay for a second connection (usually more than doubling their cost) if a single connection was satisfactory? Although providers try to vertically integrate their operations, time and time again, vertical integration tends to increase the risk for the customer.
Because, if the ISP goes out of business the lead-times for getting a new connection exceed 40-days. This was my point on invoking the DSLnetworks/Covad spectre (it's the one I know the most details of). Also reference FlashPoint, NorthPoint, et al. We are now suffering over 100,000 businesses being disconnected from the Intenet because their upstream went tits-up. So, don't tell me it doesn't happen. This is the original reason for having multi-homing with two different upstreams. In most cases, the connection itself was rock-solid up until the time the lights went out. In many cases, there was no warning. In ALL cases, the outage exceeded 4-weeks unless the site was multi-homed somehow. My latest quote for a new DSL connection is 42 days. T1s are 6-8 weeks. Bigger pipes are 2-6 months for the fastest response, many cases are longer. Back to business failures, the DSL world is looking rocky at best. Rythms isn't looking very solid and neither is Covad. Some of the NorthPoint customers are not going with either, electing to go with the local RBOC instead (despite the hassles and long lead-times). What many businesses really need is true multi-homing.
Mid-level providers serve an important function in the Internet hierarchy. Multi-homing works well with mid-level providers aggregating local routes, and managing redudancy between long-haul providers. If you don't use a mid-level provider, to achieve the same reliability you end up needing to be your own mid-level provider.
Exactly. You also save some monthly recurring cost.
Why can't a large provider operate their network as a set of mid-level networks, and connections to multiple long-haul networks. They could.
But, they dont.
In the referenced message, Roeland Meyer said: <snip>
My latest quote for a new DSL connection is 42 days. T1s are 6-8 weeks. Bigger pipes are 2-6 months for the fastest response, many cases are longer.
Back to business failures, the DSL world is looking rocky at best. Rythms isn't looking very solid and neither is Covad. Some of the NorthPoint customers are not going with either, electing to go with the local RBOC instead (despite the hassles and long lead-times). What many businesses really need is true multi-homing. <snip>
So, if people picked better providers, they wouldn't need to multihome. You feel you need to multihome, because you keep picking DSL, which just isn't a good choce for "mission critical applications".
Yo Stephen! On Wed, 4 Apr 2001, Stephen Griffin wrote:
So, if people picked better providers, they wouldn't need to multihome. You feel you need to multihome, because you keep picking DSL, which just isn't a good choce for "mission critical applications".
PSI could be next. They are not DSL. If I still had a PSInet connection I would sure want it multihomed. I also have no choice about the local telco. They have been known to drop individual T1s on me. I sleep a lot better knowing I have backup. RGDS GARY --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Gary E. Miller Rellim 20340 Empire Ave, Suite E-3, Bend, OR 97701 gem@rellim.com Tel:+1(541)382-8588 Fax: +1(541)382-8676
What about CAIS Hotel/Apartment/DSL? They're about due to be de-listed from NASDAQ and it doesn't look like KKR is planning to throw more money at them... I think they use COVAD, though, so at least the switch will be a (little) less hectic one. Matt __ Matt Levine <matt@deliver3.com> "I used to think that the brain was the most wonderful organ in my body. Then I realized who was telling me this." -- Emo Phillips -----Original Message----- From: owner-nanog@merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog@merit.edu]On Behalf Of Gary E. Miller Sent: Wednesday, April 04, 2001 5:28 PM To: Stephen Griffin Cc: nanog@merit.edu Subject: Re: Faster 'Net growth rate raises fears about routers Yo Stephen! On Wed, 4 Apr 2001, Stephen Griffin wrote:
So, if people picked better providers, they wouldn't need to multihome. You feel you need to multihome, because you keep picking DSL, which just isn't a good choce for "mission critical applications".
PSI could be next. They are not DSL. If I still had a PSInet connection I would sure want it multihomed. I also have no choice about the local telco. They have been known to drop individual T1s on me. I sleep a lot better knowing I have backup. RGDS GARY -------------------------------------------------------------------------- - Gary E. Miller Rellim 20340 Empire Ave, Suite E-3, Bend, OR 97701 gem@rellim.com Tel:+1(541)382-8588 Fax: +1(541)382-8676
In the referenced message, Gary E. Miller said:
Yo Stephen!
On Wed, 4 Apr 2001, Stephen Griffin wrote:
So, if people picked better providers, they wouldn't need to multihome. You feel you need to multihome, because you keep picking DSL, which just isn't a good choce for "mission critical applications".
PSI could be next. They are not DSL. If I still had a PSInet connection I would sure want it multihomed.
I don't see how this changes anything. DSL is a subset of the "not good" variety, not the complete set. If I had "mission critical applications" I would probably include companies that are likely to file for Chapter 7 or Chapter 11 in the "not good" variety. Certainly people can argue (and would probably make more headway) that the majority of providers aren't "good enough". I would certainly advocate for providers working for better stability through things like effective route-filtering, and spending less money on router memory and more on additional redundancy and infrastructure. These things would make the need to multihome go away, reducing the cost to the end consumer (through less incremental upgrades to support the bloat, as well as not paying for service to multiple providers). Unfortunately, I think many people can't see the forest for the trees, drive up the costs for every provider, decrease stability, and on the long term raise their own costs. Stephen All my opinions, etc etc
On Wed, 04 Apr 2001 19:31:24 EDT, Stephen Griffin <stephen.griffin@rcn.com> said:
Certainly people can argue (and would probably make more headway) that the majority of providers aren't "good enough". I would certainly advocate for providers working for better stability through things like effective
And actually, the *ORIGINAL* commen (from Patrik Falstrom, if I remember right) that *started* this thread basically boiled down to: "the majority of people who are multihoming are doing it because providers aren't good enough, and wouldn't have to multihome if providers were Getting It Right". We've gone full circle guys. Let's give it a rest. ;) Valdis Kletnieks Operating Systems Analyst Virginia Tech
On Wed, Apr 04, 2001 at 07:31:24AM -0400, Stephen Griffin wrote:
In the referenced message, Gary E. Miller said:
On Wed, 4 Apr 2001, Stephen Griffin wrote:
So, if people picked better providers, they wouldn't need to multihome. You feel you need to multihome, because you keep picking DSL, which just isn't a good choce for "mission critical applications".
PSI could be next. They are not DSL. If I still had a PSInet connection I would sure want it multihomed.
I don't see how this changes anything. DSL is a subset of the "not good" variety, not the complete set. If I had "mission critical applications" I would probably include companies that are likely to file for Chapter 7 or Chapter 11 in the "not good" variety.
umm, perhaps you might have a better term than just "DSL". it's pretty common to supply DS1 circuits over HDSL lines now-a-days. so, one of our T1's looks identical (even to the bumbling ILEC "technicians") to two $40/month residential DSL lines. up to the DSLAM and beyond, i would assume... -- Henry Yen Aegis Information Systems, Inc. Senior Systems Programmer Hicksville, New York
Stephen Griffin wrote:
In the referenced message, Roeland Meyer said: <snip>
My latest quote for a new DSL connection is 42 days. T1s are 6-8 weeks. Bigger pipes are 2-6 months for the fastest response, many cases are longer.
Back to business failures, the DSL world is looking rocky at best. Rythms isn't looking very solid and neither is Covad. Some of the NorthPoint customers are not going with either, electing to go with the local RBOC instead (despite the hassles and long lead-times). What many businesses really need is true multi-homing. <snip>
So, if people picked better providers, they wouldn't need to multihome. You feel you need to multihome, because you keep picking DSL, which just isn't a good choce for "mission critical applications".
UUNet had some sort of routing problem a few days ago, according to reports on NANOG. I guess UUNet isn't on your list of providers to pick either, eh? A few years ago the network supporting the Chicago commodities exchange died, and was out for a week. That was a major carrier. As others have argued, EVERYONE has problems at some point in time. Some applications are critical enough that multi-homing is a necessity. Ultimately people with the applications which require it will insist on having the redundancy. The cost isn't necessarily the issue, especially when the cost of not having redundancy is financial ruin, or risking people's lives. -- ----------------------------------------------------------------- Daniel Senie dts@senie.com Amaranth Networks Inc. http://www.amaranth.com
participants (7)
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Daniel Senie -
Gary E. Miller -
Henry Yen -
Matt Levine -
Roeland Meyer -
Stephen Griffin -
Valdis.Kletnieks＠vt.edu