Pinging routers for network status
On Sun, 17 December 2000, John Fraizer wrote:
On Sat, 16 Dec 2000 nanog@rmrf.net wrote:
We at SAVVIS run continous pings to every backbone router that we own. (John - this does not include our ATM switches, we have no way to monitor latency between them). But if, say, our connection to Sprint or
Um, sure you do. You know your atm mesh and (hopefully) you have an IP address bound up on the switch itself so you can gather snmp statistics from the box.
Most network providers ping their routers for network status. Several providers even track RTT to detect changes. But very few customers connect to routers. Comparing the performance you see with HP Openview or similar products with the performance customers see remains an interesting question. Sometimes C&W's or AT&T's traffic web site does show a problem. But there are also problems that don't show up in intra-network pings. In particular IGP/BGP routing issues can result in severe access network problems, but no problem with the internal provider network mesh used for pings.
On 17 Dec 2000, Sean Donelan wrote: > Most network providers ping their routers for network status. Several > providers even track RTT to detect changes. But very few customers > connect to routers. I'd disagree with this, at least from what I've observed of our customers... I see a fairly steady stream of ICMP directed to the loopback and tail-circuit interfaces of our core and tail-circuit routers from customer address space, and if I were to guess, I'd say that 10%-15% of our customers were using some sort of ICMP-based uptime-monitoring packages which are looking at their Internet connection, among other things. From talking with them, I think most of them are using them to monitor WAN and VPN link uptime, and that they just throw our router into the list as an afterthought. -Bill
Customers are constantly pinging our edge router, ns, or mail server. Recently we had a flood of "your network is down" calls because customers where pinging a well known site we host. That site decided to block all ICMP (don't start with me). We have since tweeked there filters to allow certain ICMP things thru. End users (read those that write the checks) seem to put a lot of stock into the ping and trace route values. Certainly the DSL customers do. Yet, I am seeing the "net" becoming more asymetric, and those ICMP ECHO / ECHO-REPLY packets aren't taking nearly the same path as they used to. jmbrown On Mon, Dec 18, 2000 at 12:12:15AM -0800, Bill Woodcock wrote:
On 17 Dec 2000, Sean Donelan wrote: > Most network providers ping their routers for network status. Several > providers even track RTT to detect changes. But very few customers > connect to routers.
I'd disagree with this, at least from what I've observed of our customers... I see a fairly steady stream of ICMP directed to the loopback and tail-circuit interfaces of our core and tail-circuit routers from customer address space, and if I were to guess, I'd say that 10%-15% of our customers were using some sort of ICMP-based uptime-monitoring packages which are looking at their Internet connection, among other things. From talking with them, I think most of them are using them to monitor WAN and VPN link uptime, and that they just throw our router into the list as an afterthought.
-Bill
> Customers are constantly pinging our edge router, ns, or mail server. > Recently we had a flood of "your network is down" calls because customers > where pinging a well known site we host. > I am seeing the "net" becoming more asymetric, and those ICMP > ECHO / ECHO-REPLY packets aren't taking nearly the same path > as they used to. You mean you're policy-routing ICMP and traceroute to a central reliable host? :-) -Bill
On Mon, 18 Dec 2000, John M . Brown wrote:
End users (read those that write the checks) seem to put a lot of stock into the ping and trace route values.
End users typically don't have the network monitoring tools available to them that NOCs do. FYI, FWIW, YMMV. Cheers, SJS. -- Steve Sobol, BOFH, President 888.480.4NET 866.DSL.EXPRESS 216.619.2NET North Shore Technologies Corporation http://NorthShoreTechnologies.net JustTheNet/JustTheNet EXPRESS DSL (ISP Services) http://JustThe.net mailto:sjsobol@NorthShoreTechnologies.net Proud resident of Cleveland, OH
And what are some of those tools? Are you referring to OpenView? jas -----Original Message----- From: owner-nanog@merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog@merit.edu]On Behalf Of Steven J. Sobol Sent: Monday, December 18, 2000 8:01 PM To: John M . Brown Cc: Bill Woodcock; Sean Donelan; nanog@merit.edu Subject: Re: Pinging routers for network status On Mon, 18 Dec 2000, John M . Brown wrote:
End users (read those that write the checks) seem to put a lot of stock into the ping and trace route values.
End users typically don't have the network monitoring tools available to them that NOCs do. FYI, FWIW, YMMV. Cheers, SJS. -- Steve Sobol, BOFH, President 888.480.4NET 866.DSL.EXPRESS 216.619.2NET North Shore Technologies Corporation http://NorthShoreTechnologies.net JustTheNet/JustTheNet EXPRESS DSL (ISP Services) http://JustThe.net mailto:sjsobol@NorthShoreTechnologies.net Proud resident of Cleveland, OH
participants (5)
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Bill Woodcock -
Jason Lewis -
John M . Brown -
Sean Donelan -
Steven J. Sobol