On 11 Oct 2002 20:33:53 -0700 James Sparenberg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Pierre back down Please. This is a neat tool yes. It does have it's > place yes. It doesn't add any more traffic than normal pings. Neat tools in the hands to those who are troubleshooting are fine, especially when used correctly... my flame was directed at those who just use troubleshooting tools to see some cool display which does nothing more than warm their hearts when things are fine, then causes them to whine when everybody else (other than themselves) does the same thing and impacts the "neat", "cool" display that now makes them think things are no longer good... > Take a > look at the tool and it's algorithms. You'll find that the numbers it > produces are only accurate on a Lan but over a connection from say an > office to the local Telco, level 3 etc etc. It can be very useful for > providing proof that Your Unix box isn't the reason you've been > experiencing a 40% drop in traffic speed over the last 3 months. (Yes > Level 3 and Pac Hell have both told me that our Linux Firewalls and > servers were the reason that our t-3 had intermittent speed drops of 75% > or more at really unusual times.) As if running M$ crap would suddenly > make a bad fiber splice good again. (Bing proved the slowdown. and an > OTDR showed the location of the break.) Again, that was NOT my beef... BTW, Jack and I corresponded offline and while the problem he initially decribed was low throughput on a DS-3, the problem was in a LAN switch feeding the DS-3 -- I don't have all the details; but if the switch was droppig into 10mbps mode as he suggested at one point, that would limit the DS-3 throughput to that same 10mbps... actually, he told me 10 one way and 5 the other... BUT, he also had a level of CRC errors which was too high for comfort; but not enough diagnostic output from one device to further characterize them... Tools are great when used by those that understand their use, impact, effectiveness and affect on what's being measured, etc... those who go "Oooooh! COOL tool!" are often not in that category. Anyway Jack's problem was "solved" by replacing a bad switch. The biggest problem I see on the 'net is the total incompetence at many ISPs (most haven't even heard of an OTDR); but that's for another rant... :^) Suffice it to say, ISPs have lots of diagnostic information available; the biggest problem is that they don't have the foggiest idea where it is, or how to look at it, let alone analyze it... Enjoy, Pierre Dr. J: let's see how many bite on this "lure"... :^) :^)
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