North American Network Operators Group
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Re: ATT <-> Broadwing (Level3) Congestion

  • From: Jerry Pasker
  • Date: Wed May 16 13:59:22 2007

Is anyone else seeing significant congestion between ATT and Broadwing in Dallas/Fort Worth?

-brandon

I have no idea if the following is related: (and frankly, I don't care, for anyone that wants to flame me on it) ;-)

I was seeing it between Qwest and Level 3 since about November(!!!), on and off. And getting worse over the months. You know it's bad when residential customers send traceroutes and ping summaries saying "Um, 6 hops out, Qwest is broken in Dallas." When I would call Qwest on it, I would get one clueless in-duh-vidual after another. Eventually, I did get a cluefull chap who summed it up with "Yeah, that's a big political finger pointing debacle." He wouldn't comment further, and I don't blame him.

(Sidebar... it's funny that as a PAYING CUSTOMER I have to talk to the front line support doofs... if I were a NON-PAYING CUSTOMER (peer) with them, I'd get to talk to some cluefull NOC person that knows what the phrase "IP transit" means.)

A week ago, admin downed my BGP session with Qwest. Life was instantly 100% better.

Maybe it was Qwest's fault. Or Maybe it Level3's fault the whole time. I don't care who's fault it is.... L3 or Qwest, or the man on the moon.....As far as I'm concerned, when two large NSPs can't get a peering arrangement to not have packet loss, they both suck equally, because they're both being equally STUPID in not solving the problem. It's not like they can't afford to upgrade something. If it's really that big of a deal, down the peering session! Transit the traffic on your own backbones to a peering session somewhere else! Idiots! Argh!!

In this case, by firing Qwest, I had the ability to punish stupid. And it felt good. Because over the months, my customers have done the same to me by leaving due to crappy performance.

This week, I'm no longer a Qwest transit customer. And I'm sleeping better at night, and my family life is even better. Life's good!

Just my two cents.