Has anyone written the equivalent of the old Bell Systems Notes on the Network for the Internet? A couple of books come close, Hueston's ISP Survival Guide and Cisco's ISP Essentials. But there doesn't seem to be anything that helps Bell heads understand what switching, routing or signaling means on the Internet. There are a lot of words which are spelled alike, but mean very different things in the Bell world and the Internet world. I've been thinking of it like driving in England or the USA. We drive on different sides of the road. Its safe until you get someone who doesn't know the rules of the road driving on the other side of the Atlantic. So how do you explain the rules of the Internet road to someone used to driving on the telephone system?
I'd love to write The Internet for Bell-Heads. Tell you what, Sean. You find an interested publisher and I'll write it. Peter ----------------------------------------------------------- Peter H. Salus Chief Knowledge Officer, Matrix NetSystems Ste. 501W 1106 Clayton Lane Austin, TX 78723 +1 512 451-7602 -----------------------------------------------------------
On Thu, Jul 11, 2002 at 03:09:19PM -0400, Sean Donelan wrote:
Has anyone written the equivalent of the old Bell Systems Notes on the Network for the Internet?
Hrmn, I can seem to download standards from http://www.ietf.org/ just fine. For some reason, I can't download anything from http://telecom-info.telcordia.com/ all the documents seem to cost about $700 apiece. Not to mention ANSI, ATIS, IEEE, ISO, ITU-T, TIA, EIA, et al. -dre
Actually, the reverse would be useful, as well. Voice Networking/SS7 stuff for us IP weenies. (i.e. not voice over IP, just straight voice) - Dan
-----Original Message----- From: owner-nanog@merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog@merit.edu]On Behalf Of Sean Donelan Sent: Thursday, July 11, 2002 3:09 PM To: nanog@merit.edu Subject: Notes on the Internet for Bell Heads
Has anyone written the equivalent of the old Bell Systems Notes on the Network for the Internet? A couple of books come close, Hueston's ISP Survival Guide and Cisco's ISP Essentials. But there doesn't seem to be anything that helps Bell heads understand what switching, routing or signaling means on the Internet. There are a lot of words which are spelled alike, but mean very different things in the Bell world and the Internet world.
I've been thinking of it like driving in England or the USA. We drive on different sides of the road. Its safe until you get someone who doesn't know the rules of the road driving on the other side of the Atlantic. So how do you explain the rules of the Internet road to someone used to driving on the telephone system?
On Thu, 11 Jul 2002, Daniel Golding wrote:
Actually, the reverse would be useful, as well. Voice Networking/SS7 stuff for us IP weenies. (i.e. not voice over IP, just straight voice)
"Integrating Voice and Data Networks," Cisco Press, ISBN 1-57870-196-1 Part I, "Traditional Voice Networks" was a marvelous clue-by-four for me as far as voice networks goes. I've read more books on the topic than I can remember--which tells you how lousy the books were. This one got me clued in fast. I wouldn't claim to be a voice god now, but at least it was accurate and in-depth enough to allow me to talk semi-intelligently with those who live in that world ("E&M? Well, I'm not into that...but I guess I can spank your ass if it'll get the circuit up any quicker.") Note to ciscopress.com: put the Table of Contents for your books online! Ch. 1 The State of Voice Communications Ch. 2 Enterprise Telephony Signaling Signaling Functions, Analog Voice Trunks, Digital Trunk Types, R2 Signaling Ch. 3 SS7 Ch. 4 Call Routing and Dial Plans Ch. 5 Defining and Measuring Voice Quality Ch. 6 Voice Digitization and Coding -- Ron Oliver <ron@openesque.com>
Working for a Telco with an ISP division, I can tell you the best thing to to do is wait for the Bell Heads to retire for the third time and keep them away from your gear until then :) But in all seriousness, a book or set of documents would be very helpful for those few Bell-shaped Heads that want to change their evil ways. -Scott (who is still trying to get back the IQ points lost in trying to understand the SS7 network and being amazed that calls ever make it through) -- Scott Call Router Geek, ATGi, home of $6.95 Prime Rib "...Everything's going to be just great again!"
On Thu, 11 Jul 2002, Scott Call wrote:
Working for a Telco with an ISP division, I can tell you the best thing to to do is wait for the Bell Heads to retire for the third time and keep them away from your gear until then :)
Yes, several people mentioned that the two groups should just maintain their seperate ways. There is this thing called convergence. If you squint real hard MPLS can almost make an IP network look like a telephone network. Add into the mix the government is desprately seeking ways to make the Internet "secure." So many vendors are trying their darndest to find a problem so they can sell a solution, even if that means creating the problem in the first place. I don't know which is scarier. Lucent/Bell Labs trying to design the next generation Internet architecture, or Cisco trying to design the next generation DCN/SS7 architecture.
(who is still trying to get back the IQ points lost in trying to understand the SS7 network and being amazed that calls ever make it through)
I'm certain the Bell heads are equally amazed that packets ever make it through the Internet. The public telephone network is still the largest network on the planet, and some amazing engineering went into creating it. I'm not going to diss telco engineers. But a Babalfish to translate would be useful. How do you explain Internet security to a telco engineer. Or the concept that the Internet doesn't have a LERG, but somehow ISPs figure out how to get traffic from point A to point B. Or the biggie, that stuff is expected to fail, so that's why you buy lots of simple, cheap ones instead of one big, expensive, never-fail box.
I don't know which is scarier. Lucent/Bell Labs trying to design the next generation Internet architecture, or Cisco trying to design the next generation DCN/SS7 architecture.
the contest is keen. for a nice view of this insanity fueled by greed, paranoia, greed, and oh greed, see the ieprep wg of the ietf.
The public telephone network is still the largest network on the planet
yup, and it transports less. is there a lesson about complexity in that?
How do you explain Internet security to a telco engineer. Or the concept that the Internet doesn't have a LERG, but somehow ISPs figure out how to get traffic from point A to point B. Or the biggie, that stuff is expected to fail, so that's why you buy lots of simple, cheap ones instead of one big, expensive, never-fail box.
dave meyer has been trying in draft-ymbk-arch-guidelines-03.txt, and will give a bit of a talk on this at ie-piggy on sunday. randy
On Thu, 11 Jul 2002, Randy Bush wrote:
I don't know which is scarier. Lucent/Bell Labs trying to design the next generation Internet architecture, or Cisco trying to design the next generation DCN/SS7 architecture.
the contest is keen. for a nice view of this insanity fueled by greed, paranoia, greed, and oh greed, see the ieprep wg of the ietf.
http://www.bell-labs.com/news/features/jaffe.html Impact of Optical, MPLS According to Jaffe, advances in network architecture and technology now coming out of Lucent and other companies may have a profound impact on cyber-security in future networks deployed by both service providers and enterprises. "Three or four years ago, all-optical switching was considered science fiction, but Lucent is providing a path to that reality with the LambdaRouter," he said. "All-optical networks don't exist yet, but they are coming, and they will greatly reduce vulnerability. "It's very hard to intercept individual packets in an all-light network because they aren't queued in output buffers at intermediate nodes. And a lightwave network gives you a better idea of where the packets have come from, which is a problem with the Internet routing protocols today's data networks use." I'm afraid this is one of those things I need help translating. I don't understand how an all-optical network improves the security of the IP layer. At best this is "improving" the security of the least vulnerable part of the network. But I could be wrong, and I'm willing to be educated.
Previously, Sean Donelan (sean@donelan.com) wrote:
I'm afraid this is one of those things I need help translating. I don't understand how an all-optical network improves the security of the IP layer. At best this is "improving" the security of the least vulnerable part of the network. But I could be wrong, and I'm willing to be educated.
It sounds an aweful lot like your initial analysis was dead on. Unless, of course, we're talking about running glass to the desktop again - the cost of which is going to be rather prohibitive for most people. And we're going to expend that cost for, as you pointed out, one of the least vulnerable parts of the network. That's rich. -- Douglas A. Dever doug@e-xpedient.com Senior Project Manager 216.373.8517
At 11:25 PM -0400 7/11/02, Sean Donelan wrote:
http://www.bell-labs.com/news/features/jaffe.html
Impact of Optical, MPLS According to Jaffe, advances in network architecture and technology now coming out of Lucent and other companies may have a profound impact on cyber-security in future networks deployed by both service providers and enterprises.
"Three or four years ago, all-optical switching was considered science fiction, but Lucent is providing a path to that reality with the LambdaRouter," he said. "All-optical networks don't exist yet, but they are coming, and they will greatly reduce vulnerability.
"It's very hard to intercept individual packets in an all-light network because they aren't queued in output buffers at intermediate nodes. And a lightwave network gives you a better idea of where the packets have come from, which is a problem with the Internet routing protocols today's data networks use."
I'm afraid this is one of those things I need help translating. I don't understand how an all-optical network improves the security of the IP layer. At best this is "improving" the security of the least vulnerable part of the network. But I could be wrong, and I'm willing to be educated.
They don't mention IP at all except by inference via MPLS. http://www.mplsrc.com/faq1.shtml#MPLS%20History item C talks about migrating layer 1 and 2 functions up to layer 3. Maybe their assumption is that by supplanting IP at layer 3 in the core, they will remove possible angles of attack? Of course, the flip side of that coin is that they will create new ones. I would imagine this looking somewhat like the IP stack only being used at the desktop level. IP would be encapsulated within [insert all-optical network protocol here] which would be used for the actual transport and routing. To take this thought experiment a little farther, in the world I describe above, my ability to attack individual hosts is still roughly the same, but my ability to attack the network itself has changed dramatically. DOS attacks could be easily traced back to individual hosts and squelched, maybe even automatically. With no global routing table to munge up, it would be harder to black hole or flood. Add in the fact that optical sniffing, while not impossible by any means today, will increasingly become non-trivial as bandwidth increases. Which is exactly one of the 'problems' they expect optical network to solve. Regards, Chris Kilbourn Founder _________________________________________________________________ digital.forest Int'l: +1-425-483-0483 where Internet solutions grow http://www.forest.net
Add in the fact that optical sniffing, while not impossible by any means today, will increasingly become non-trivial as bandwidth increases. Which is exactly one of the 'problems' they expect optical network to solve.
You mean just expensive, right? i.e. a couple transponders and an OC48 or OC192 switch. -Ralph
At 2:32 PM -0400 7/12/02, Ralph Doncaster wrote:
Add in the fact that optical sniffing, while not impossible by any means today, will increasingly become non-trivial as bandwidth increases. Which is exactly one of the 'problems' they expect optical network to solve.
You mean just expensive, right? i.e. a couple transponders and an OC48 or OC192 switch.
Cost is a factor, certainly, but the storage of the captured data becomes the larger problem. In the TB or PB range of optical data transmission, where and how do you store the captured information? Unless you have TB's of solid state drives to stream electrons into after an optoelectronic photon -> electron conversion your only other option is to store the photons in loops of fiber with an optical repeater. Until we have quantum computers which might be able to parse the data in real-time, we still need a buffer to store the data in before we can look for the needle in the haystack. Even with some nifty filtering on the sniffer, you're potentially looking at obscenely large amounts of information to store. I would expect that the distance of fiber you will need to store the data in will be the gating factor, which means it tilts more towards a physical issue than a cost issue. If I need a few thousand kilometers of fiber as a storage loop, it's kind of hard to move around efficiently. :-) Regards, Chris Kilbourn Founder _________________________________________________________________ digital.forest Int'l: +1-425-483-0483 where Internet solutions grow http://www.forest.net
Actually, research has been done that uses rare gasses to slow and even stop the photons down in a tube. It would be possible to store the states of photons in these tubs and then release them when you wanted with out requiring miles of fiber. Also, photons work inpairs. It may be possible to split the pairs on the fiber and observe the actions in the fiber remotely by capturing one side of the pair and allowing the others to continue. They interact in pairs even though physical distance is between them. On Fri, 12 Jul 2002, Chris Kilbourn wrote:
At 2:32 PM -0400 7/12/02, Ralph Doncaster wrote:
Add in the fact that optical sniffing, while not impossible by any means today, will increasingly become non-trivial as bandwidth increases. Which is exactly one of the 'problems' they expect optical network to solve.
You mean just expensive, right? i.e. a couple transponders and an OC48 or OC192 switch.
Cost is a factor, certainly, but the storage of the captured data becomes the larger problem.
In the TB or PB range of optical data transmission, where and how do you store the captured information? Unless you have TB's of solid state drives to stream electrons into after an optoelectronic photon -> electron conversion your only other option is to store the photons in loops of fiber with an optical repeater.
Until we have quantum computers which might be able to parse the data in real-time, we still need a buffer to store the data in before we can look for the needle in the haystack.
Even with some nifty filtering on the sniffer, you're potentially looking at obscenely large amounts of information to store.
I would expect that the distance of fiber you will need to store the data in will be the gating factor, which means it tilts more towards a physical issue than a cost issue.
If I need a few thousand kilometers of fiber as a storage loop, it's kind of hard to move around efficiently. :-)
Regards,
Chris Kilbourn Founder _________________________________________________________________ digital.forest Int'l: +1-425-483-0483 where Internet solutions grow http://www.forest.net
Hello, Since I am one of their customers I called and was told they will be stopping their service in California. At this time they are not telling me how much time I have before the serice is stopped. Any pointers who supplies xDSL and will route my legacy and portable IP space that was issued before ARIN was formed?
Thank you for choosing Sprint Business DSL service. It has been our privilege to provide this service to you. Sprint announced today that we will decommission our current high-speed data platform in cities where Sprint has found a better way to deliver service via an alternative platform or where high access and infrastructure costs make it difficult to continue service.
Next week, we will provide you with pertinent information about alternative high-speed service options. At that time, we will communicate more information on how this announcement will affect your current DSL service.
We thank you for your business and hope you will choose to continue as our valued customer.
This is an auto-generated email, please do not reply to this address. If you would like to speak with one of our customer care representatives, please call 1-800-777-4686.
We will be in contact soon.
Thanks, Michael
You might want to check out what the current prices are for a T-1. I used to work for a 9-12 school, and I upgraded their old frame 56k to sdsl. My friend who just took over the job is upgrading to a T-1 this summer. Not through the local telco it seems, but he says it will be the same price for the full T-1. YMMV Peter Hill --On Friday, July 12, 2002 12:48 PM -0700 michael@aplatform.com wrote:
Hello,
Since I am one of their customers I called and was told they will be stopping their service in California. At this time they are not telling me how much time I have before the serice is stopped. Any pointers who supplies xDSL and will route my legacy and portable IP space that was issued before ARIN was formed?
Thank you for choosing Sprint Business DSL service. It has been our privilege to provide this service to you. Sprint announced today that we will decommission our current high-speed data platform in cities where Sprint has found a better way to deliver service via an alternative platform or where high access and infrastructure costs make it difficult to continue service.
Next week, we will provide you with pertinent information about alternative high-speed service options. At that time, we will communicate more information on how this announcement will affect your current DSL service.
We thank you for your business and hope you will choose to continue as our valued customer.
This is an auto-generated email, please do not reply to this address. If you would like to speak with one of our customer care representatives, please call 1-800-777-4686.
We will be in contact soon.
Thanks,
Michael
IF there is a SBC PBI routing enginer reading this can you please contact me privately. Thanks, Michael
Hello, If anyone from sprint who can remove a route can contact me off line I would appreciate it. Trying to switch providers since sprintbiz dsl is being discontinued I need to have an announcement stopped. Thanks, Michael...
nanog@merit.edu is NOT noc@sprint.com. go call or email sprint. ----- Original Message ----- From: <michael@aplatform.com> To: <nanog@merit.edu> Sent: Monday, August 26, 2002 4:35 PM Subject: sprint biz dsl provisioning contact
Hello,
If anyone from sprint who can remove a route can contact me off line I would appreciate it. Trying to switch providers since sprintbiz dsl is being discontinued I need to have an announcement stopped.
Thanks,
Michael...
At 12:36 PM -0700 7/12/02, Scott Granados wrote:
Actually, research has been done that uses rare gasses to slow and even stop the photons down in a tube. It would be possible to store the states of photons in these tubes and then release them when you wanted with out requiring miles of fiber.
That process requires a reference beam, and currently can only be tuned for specific wavelengths. Decoherence also occurs fairly rapidly in the system. In a DWDM network, you would need as many units as there are wavelengths in order to do a full capture. http://www.sciencenews.org/20010127/fob1.asp Given how fast this field is moving though, it may become practical sooner rather than later.
Also, photons work in pairs. It may be possible to split the pairs on the fiber and observe the actions in the fiber remotely by capturing one side of the pair and allowing the others to continue. They interact in pairs even though physical distance is between them.
I think you may be thinking about quantum-entangled pairs. That phenomena is better suited to cryptography than general networking. In an entangled system, both recipients would know pretty quickly that they did not receive their photons as there would be an early 'measurement' on one end, and a missing photon on the other.
On Fri, 12 Jul 2002, Chris Kilbourn wrote:
At 2:32 PM -0400 7/12/02, Ralph Doncaster wrote:
Add in the fact that optical sniffing, while not impossible by any means today, will increasingly become non-trivial as bandwidth increases. Which is exactly one of the 'problems' they expect optical network to solve.
You mean just expensive, right? i.e. a couple transponders and an OC48 or OC192 switch.
Cost is a factor, certainly, but the storage of the captured data becomes the larger problem.
In the TB or PB range of optical data transmission, where and how do you store the captured information? Unless you have TB's of solid state drives to stream electrons into after an optoelectronic photon -> electron conversion your only other option is to store the photons in loops of fiber with an optical repeater.
Until we have quantum computers which might be able to parse the data in real-time, we still need a buffer to store the data in before we can look for the needle in the haystack.
Even with some nifty filtering on the sniffer, you're potentially looking at obscenely large amounts of information to store.
I would expect that the distance of fiber you will need to store the data in will be the gating factor, which means it tilts more towards a physical issue than a cost issue.
If I need a few thousand kilometers of fiber as a storage loop, it's kind of hard to move around efficiently. :-)
Regards, Chris Kilbourn Founder _________________________________________________________________ digital.forest Int'l: +1-425-483-0483 where Internet solutions grow http://www.forest.net
The discussion is certainly entertaining, but -- 1) All-optical networking is a bunch of nonsense until optical processing ability includes complete set of logic and storage elements - i.e. achieving fully blown optical computing. Rationale for the statement: telecom is fundamentally a multiplexing game, and w/o stochastical multiplexing a network won't be able to achieve price/performance comparable to that of stochastically muxed network. Stochastical multiplexing requires logic and storage. The current opcial gates are all electrically-controlled, and either mechanical (and wear rather quickly, too, so you can't switch them per-packet or whatever), or iherently slow (liquid crystals), or potentially fast (poled LiNbO3 structures, for example) but requiring tens of kV per mm, making it slow to charge/discharge. Besides, your truly years ago invented a practical way to achieve nearly infinite switching capacity in electronics. Too bad, Pluris didn't survive the WorldCom scandal, as some investors suddenly got cold feet. 2) Wiretapping does not require storage of the entire traffic stream; and filtering for the target sessions can be done relatively easily at wire speed. 3) Nitpicking:
I think you may be thinking about quantum-entangled pairs. That phenomena is better suited to cryptography than general networking.
In an entangled system, both recipients would know pretty quickly that they did not receive their photons as there would be an early 'measurement' on one end, and a missing photon on the other.
You cannot detect "measurement" per se. What you get is skewed statistics; the entangled pairs obey Bell inequalities, which no classical system can. This gives an opportunity to detect insertion of anyting destroying entanglement of the pair - but only statistically. You need to send enough pairs to distinguish normal noise from intrusion reliably. Besides, quantum entanglement cannot be used to send any information at all. What it gives is the ability to get co-ordinated sets of measurements at the ends, but the actual results of those measurements are random. I.e. you can generate identical vectors of random bits at the ends, but cannot send any useful message across using only entanglement. Therefore quantum entanglement (aka Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox) does not violate the central postulate of the special relativity theory (that no kind of entity can propagate faster than the speed of light in vacuum, in any non-accelerating reference frame). --vadim
Add in the fact that optical sniffing, while not impossible by any means today, will increasingly become non-trivial as bandwidth increases. Which is exactly one of the 'problems' they expect optical network to solve.
You mean just expensive, right? i.e. a couple transponders and an OC48 or OC192 switch.
Depending on what you are trying to gather, it will also become more difficult at higher speeds to due the data volume. But you are right in that it's more about money than effort in the end. - kurtis -
On Thu, Jul 11, 2002 at 08:24:38PM -0400, Sean Donelan wrote:
Yes, several people mentioned that the two groups should just maintain their seperate ways. There is this thing called convergence.
I know a small number of operators with really talented and dedicated architecture people who have made converged networks work, and have in consequence both reduced their costs and increased the number of products they are able to offer. I know way more operators with really talented and dedicated architecture people who are preaching the gospel of convergence, and investing in new equipment to support it, and are having their efforts sabotaged at every turn by voice and data people who have closed ranks and are defending their respective empires. These operators wind up having to operate three networks (data, voice and data+voice), with correspondingly increased operational costs. The interop issues (both operational and architectural) between the three networks increase complexity, reducing the chance that any convergence products ever come to market, neatly and efficiently defeating the entire point of the initial exercise.
How do you explain Internet security to a telco engineer.
You change the subject and make him feel good about his voice switches until he wanders away and loses interest in bothering you. Joe
participants (18)
-
Chris Kilbourn -
Daniel Golding -
Douglas A. Dever -
dre -
Gil Cohen -
JC Dill -
Joe Abley -
Kurt Erik Lindqvist -
michael＠aplatform.com -
Peter John Hill -
Peter Salus -
Ralph Doncaster -
Randy Bush -
Ron Oliver -
Scott Call -
Scott Granados -
Sean Donelan -
Vadim Antonov