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Re: links on the blink (fwd)

  • From: Mike
  • Date: Sat Nov 04 16:31:46 1995

The current method should probably be: locate where the packet loss 
occurs, forward it to your provider, your provider forwards it to his, 
and so on.
Yes, there is no formal mechanism to my knowledge, but should we really 
make one?

If we start to formalize then we have later to formalize the meetpoint 
relationships (who is responsible for packet loss on a meetpoint network?).

A better point of pressure: chose a provider with shorter internal paths.

On the Internet anyone can kick the tires of any network by sending 
probing data accross it. You get latency, hop count, and throughput of 
the smallest link in your path.

The job to find this out is a consultant's job. The consultant knows 
about the Internet topology, and how to quickly find out if a provider 
will be ok for the wanted connectivity, or not.
Scopes of connectivity can be global reachability (trading off maybe 
hopcounts and comparing on offered routes and latency), short paths (for 
virtual private networks or national connectivity), points of presence in 
your business locations.

If everyone would chose, then the now big networks, that offer an 
impressive display of capital investment (called excessive hopcount by 
some people with negative attitude   ;-) ), will probably redisign their 
routing (or why do some connections backtrack via both coasts and then to 
the next metropole 200 miles away?). 

I would say, that market pressure is the best regulatory agent: pinches 
directly into the providers pocketbook. I accept this and design for 
customers, and have customer needs and quality issues in mind when the 
network grows (which it does currently tremendously).

Instead of organizational reglementation, I would put the current path of 
Internet routing forward: with current tools it is possible to include 
routing decisions of networks around a provider in that providers routing 
topology. It is just a matter of time to implement it.

Mike



On Sat, 4 Nov 1995, Hans-Werner Braun wrote:

> I will not go into a point by point rebuttal here, even though I
> generally do not subscribe to your arguments. I am not planning on
> "winning" here, I just want to get the issues on the table and evaluate
> the solution space. Just let me ask you, as a customer who fairly
> frequently experiences 10% packet loss between major Internet locations
> across major service providers (no mom and pop shops in the middle or
> at the end points), how would you suggest I deal with that?  My
> complaints to the involved service providers have typically gotten
> unanswered by the national service provider, and saying "we can't do
> anything about it except letting our national service provider know" by
> my regional service provider. There is no quality control at the
> inter-ISP level. I want to see that fixed. I don't care how, I do know
> that the current situation is intolerable. I believe that this is prime
> NANOG (and IEPG) business. NSF and the feds are out, with the NSFNET
> backbone dismantling, and the kitchen you asked for to cook (ahem!) in
> is all yours to get your tailfeathers burned in all by yourself.
> 

----------------------------------------------------------
                                                   IDT
Michael F. Nittmann                             ---------
Senior Network Architect                        \       /
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