North American Network Operators Group

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RE: multi-homing fixes

  • From: Roeland Meyer
  • Date: Thu Aug 23 18:23:54 2001

<quote>
Multihoming is popular because the cost of transmission circuits is
plummeting, making it less expensive to buy Internet access services from
two or more ISPs. At the same time, companies are more concerned about the
reliability of their networks and less willing to trust one service
provider. 
</quote>

This gal only has it half right. It isn't the reduced cost of circuits, it's
it's the uncertainty that that circuit's provider will still be in business
next month, or that a change in that provider's business plans, or M&A
activity, will make them abandon that circuit altogether. This coupled with
2+ month provisioning schedules. A dropped circuit will result in a 2+ month
business outage. A 2 week business outage will put most companies out of
business for good. How many, of Northpoint's 100K customers survived
Northpoint's business failure? How many, of those that did, were
multi-homed? How many of them are multi-homed now?

<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>

Is Patrik Faltstrom still an IETF co-chair? Is he still helping the
[failing] credibility of the IETF? Maybe, that's why? How can any ISP, or
anyone else, credibly guarantee that they'll still be in business next year?
Or, that they wont sell out to the very rich bad guys? Or, that circuit
provisioning will drop to under 5 calendar days?  Because, that is the
*only* way you will convince business customers that they don't need to
multi-home.

At $99US for 512MB of PC133 RAM (the point is, RAM is disgustingly cheap and
getting cheaper), more RAM in the routers is a quick answer. Router clusters
are another answer, and faster CPUs are yet another. All of the above,
should get us by until we get a better router architecture. If the IETF is
being at all effective, that should start now and finish sometime next year,
so that we can start the 5-year technology roll-out cycle.

The next time that PF goes out in public, he should either have his lips
perma-bonded together, or have the lower part of his face covered in duct
tape. Maybe then, he can resist the urge to chew on his feet.


|> -----Original Message-----
|> From: Irwin Lazar [mailto:[email protected]]
|> Sent: Thursday, August 23, 2001 2:35 PM
|> To: '[email protected]'
|> Subject: multi-homing fixes
|> 
|> 
|> 
|> A while back there was an article in Network World on 
|> problems due to the
|> rise of multihoming:
|> http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2001/0402routing.html which was 
|> discussed in
|> great length in this forum.
|> 
|> Has the IETF created a working group to deal with a 
|> long-term fix for this
|> issue, and if so, is there a URL for its activities?