Replacing PSTN with VoIP wise? Was Re: Phone networks struggle in Hurricane Katrina's wake
Telecom New Zealand announced the other day their intention to do precisely this. In relatively short order we will replace the entire PSTN and be delivering all our services for customers over the IP network. That has the potential to reduce costs for customers and put a lot more control and flexibility in customers. hands, wherever they are . at home, at work or on the move.. From http://www.telecom-media.co.nz/releases_detail.asp?id=3223page=index I have to say I would usually agree with you - but it looks like I may not have a choice, going forward... The whole country to be migrated by 2012. The whole idea of not having POTS to fall back on doesn't sit well with me - As part of AREC we prepare for a situation where all other means have failed. Suddenly it seems so much more likely... ? Mark. On Tue, 30 Aug 2005, Fergie (Paul Ferguson) wrote: Me? I personally never trade my POTS for VoIP... - ferg -- Iljitsch van Beijnum [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 30-aug-2005, at 22:08, Fergie (Paul Ferguson) wrote: In this age of cheap commoditized consumer electronics and advanced mobile technology, why can't all the people of a city make contact during an emergency? Simple: it's too expensive. Keep this in mind when trading in your POTS service for VoIP service over the internet. Discounting the local loop which is often the same in both cases, POTS is extremely reliable while VoIP over the public internet, well, isn't. But apparently people that switch to VoIP don't mind the reduced likelihood of being able to make calls during the next large scale emergency.
Re: List Phishing of e-mails from nanog
Steve Brown wrote: Sweet, got my first piece of phishing SPAM (to the address I use for this list) shortly after posting a couple of days ago. That's probably because the nanog list is gatewayed to a newsgroup. Your posting address (and everyone else's posting address) has been exposed to a news-trawling spider: http://groups.google.com/groups?q=nanog%40stellablue.org There's a reason I'm now using dated usernames for my mailing list subscriptions. Between lists that leak addresses onto the web and news servers, and other subscribers who get viruses and trojans on their computer, there's simply no way to keep an email address out of the hands of spammers anymore. jc
Re: Phone networks struggle in Hurricane Katrina's wake
Fergie (Paul Ferguson) wrote: Telephone companies struggled to restore service FYI - if you are trying to reach someone in the impacted area who has a cell phone but you can't get thru because all circuits are busy then give SMS a try. I exchanged 8 SMS messages[1] between 15:58 and 16:21 PDT today with a friend in Baton Rouge that I had been unable to contact via email or phone since after the storm passed. SMS went straight thru with no noticeable delays. If your contact has a working cell phone (hasn't run the battery dead or gotten it wet) within reach of a working cell tower, you may be able to at least get word that they are OK. jc [1] A brief summary regarding conditions in Baton Rouge (BR): Kind of Crazy in BR but nothing damagewise like in NO and in Mississippi. We have a large number of our NO employees who evacuated to our BR office. They cannot return home - they can't even start repairs there until the water is pumped so they are helping us restore service to the BR area. For the latest info see the Katrina Blog at wwltv.com.
Re: Replacing PSTN with VoIP wise? Was Re: Phone networks struggle in Hurricane Katrina's wake
At the risk of replying to myself, The below article is about the core, not the edge Theres another article on Telecom's site relating to trials for edge IP equipment. So my take on the NZ situation was a bit warped. I do see a risk in the move toward IP systems at the edge. At the core is a different story to at least some degree. Twas also pointed out that British Telecom are heading down the same track as Telecom NZ, and their rollout should be completed earlier. I trust therefore that it has all been thought out in terms of robustness and the like. As was pointed out to me offlist, when the PSTN falls over, alternate-network based IP systems do have their merits - but I've always favoured the simple over the complex from a view of resilience. IP stuff has that many more layers to break? Operationally, natural disasters and the like do reveal our reliance on increasingly complex systems, with x number of additional dependencies that can take the service down. Of course, events like Katrina are fairly extreme, but in general, people should have some sort of fallback position. Its not a bad general rule. Mark. On Wed, 31 Aug 2005, Mark Foster wrote: Telecom New Zealand announced the other day their intention to do precisely this. In relatively short order we will replace the entire PSTN and be delivering all our services for customers over the IP network. That has the potential to reduce costs for customers and put a lot more control and flexibility in customers. hands, wherever they are . at home, at work or on the move.. From http://www.telecom-media.co.nz/releases_detail.asp?id=3223page=index I have to say I would usually agree with you - but it looks like I may not have a choice, going forward... The whole country to be migrated by 2012. The whole idea of not having POTS to fall back on doesn't sit well with me - As part of AREC we prepare for a situation where all other means have failed. Suddenly it seems so much more likely... ? Mark. On Tue, 30 Aug 2005, Fergie (Paul Ferguson) wrote: Me? I personally never trade my POTS for VoIP... - ferg -- Iljitsch van Beijnum [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 30-aug-2005, at 22:08, Fergie (Paul Ferguson) wrote: In this age of cheap commoditized consumer electronics and advanced mobile technology, why can't all the people of a city make contact during an emergency? Simple: it's too expensive. Keep this in mind when trading in your POTS service for VoIP service over the internet. Discounting the local loop which is often the same in both cases, POTS is extremely reliable while VoIP over the public internet, well, isn't. But apparently people that switch to VoIP don't mind the reduced likelihood of being able to make calls during the next large scale emergency.
Re: Yahoo! -- A Phisher-friendly hosting domain?
But it caught my eye that SOMEBODY at Yahoo! ought to be reviewing domain names like bankofthewestupdate.com Registrars should as well, but this is not the way the Internet works. Sometimes, this is a good thing, sometimes, it's not. It seems that the A RR has been pulled around 2005-08-30 21:00 UTC, so this particular issue has already been resolved.
Re: List Phishing of e-mails from nanog
* jc dill: Steve Brown wrote: Sweet, got my first piece of phishing SPAM (to the address I use for this list) shortly after posting a couple of days ago. That's probably because the nanog list is gatewayed to a newsgroup. Your posting address (and everyone else's posting address) has been exposed to a news-trawling spider: And a there are probably a few NANOG subscribers who read the list on compromised Windows machines. 8-
Trunks (etherchannels) between Foundry Cisco 4506 (IOS Switch)????
Hello Everybody, Please help me with this issue. Any success stories with config samples are welcome... Thanks a lot in advance. -- With best regards, GRED-RIPE
Re: Phone networks struggle in Hurricane Katrina's wake
Red Cross looks to IT for post-Katrina recovery http://www.computerworld. com/securitytopics/security/recovery/story/0,10801,104250,00.html ..would perhaps elicit some operational suggestions from the peanut gallery on how to perhaps assist in this effort, or prhaps contribute to the BellSouth issues, etc., then mea culpa. There is also the issue of planning. By examining what happens during a disaster situation we can learn lessons and fix our own disaster plans before we need to implement them. For instance the communications failures in New Orleans were predictable. That's why the RedCross moved in comms gear prior to the hurricane. Even in an event where the physical damage is miniscule in comparison, i.e. the 7th July attacks in London, the cellular networks were overloaded and difficult to use for an entire day. So, perhaps portable WiFi gear like the Breadcrumbs here http://www.rajant.com/ would be something more of us should be stocking. If there is a disaster in your city, how will you communicate between your data centers and offices if the cell and phone networks go down? And if you set up a network of devices like the Breadcrumbs, then you are essentially building an alternate communications network that is connected to the Internet, i.e. you are an ISP and a wifi comms network connected to you is part of the Internet. So, to take this a step further, how many of the telecommunications companies on this list have an emergency comms plan coordinated with local emergency authorities in which you plan TO BE A PROVIDER OF EMERGENCY COMM SERVICES, and not just a user. According to meteorlogists, we are entering a period of a dozen years in which hurricanes can be expected to be stronger on average. And there are expected to be another 4 to 5 bug hurricanes before this year's hurricane season is over. And hurricanes are unpredictable. Canadians who think they are immune should check what happened in Southern Ontario during Hurrican Hazel in the 1950's. Holland, Germany and England have experienced storm surges even without hurricanes. And the list of possible disasters goes on. We cannot predict what will happen and where it will happen but we can confidently predict that SOMETHING will happen on a regular basis. So, how can ISPs make plans to be part of the solution when a disaster does happen? --Michael Dillon
Re: beware mailing list bounce automation
wondered why some queues were getting long. decided to actually look before running the mailing list bounce scrubber. a whole lot of [EMAIL PROTECTED] etc. beware. crank up them queues. exim hack is some variation on tulane.edu * F,12h,30m; G,24h,3h,1.5; F,30d,12h Given the floods, it could be weeks before some of these sites are onstream again. However, if they have backups of their systems, they could recreate some of their services, such as email servers, in data centers outside New Orleans. That is one thing that people could do to help. There are lots of New Orleans residents who escaped the city but if they use an email service located in the city, then when it goes down, it will be down for weeks. --Michael Dillon
Re: Replacing PSTN with VoIP wise? Was Re: Phone networks struggle in Hurricane Katrina's wake
On 31-aug-2005, at 10:04, Mark Foster wrote: I do see a risk in the move toward IP systems at the edge. At the core is a different story to at least some degree. Twas also pointed out that British Telecom are heading down the same track as Telecom NZ, and their rollout should be completed earlier. I trust therefore that it has all been thought out in terms of robustness and the like. There are two types of VoIP: voice over a private, tightly controlled IP network, and voice over the public internet. Now obviously the latter is a risky proposition, as it imports all the limitations of the internet into the voice service. Apart from the fact that many parts of the internet aren't all that robust (but some are), this is a problem because voice and IP react differently to congestion collapse, which invariably happens to some degree in big emergencies. With IP, delays and packet loss build up, slowing everything down, but allowing many protocols to continue to work at a reduced rate. With PSTN, initiating calls starts failing more and more, but when you get through, you generally get to talk because you get a reserved piece of the scarce bandwidth. With VoIP, packet loss and delay eventually make the service useless. So VoIP fails harder than either traditional IP apps and PSTN. However, voice over a private network isn't entirely trouble-free, even though the private network can be designed such that congestion is a less fatal problem. And it does have the advantage that it allows IP routing protocols to route ongoing calls around failed parts of the network. On the other hand, in a circuit switched network you can do all kinds of interesting stuff (such as restarting all your control software) without breaking your sessions. We're only now seeing this in IP, and I think it's not really possible to reach the same levels with IP routing even in the long run. And then there is all this SIP stuff, which I'm (thankfully) only superficially familiar with, but never seemed particular robust to me. And voice over any kind of packet infrastructure introduces significant additional delays. I think in 10 years or so we'll realize that TDM isn't so bad after all.
TIA-942 Datacenter Standardization
[snip] The Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) -- the people who brought you the CAT standards for unshielded twisted pair cabling -- recently undertook a vast challenge to publish a definitive document encompassing best practices and design considerations for every single aspect of the modern data center. The standard, entitled Telecommunications Infrastructure Standard for Data Centers, TIA-942, weighs in at 148 pages, and covers everything from site selection to rack mounting methods. [/snip] Link: http://searchdatacenter.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid80_gci1120625,00.html Also: http://www.tiaonline.org/media/press_releases/index.cfm?parelease=05-46 I seem to remember some folks asking questions about such a thing here in the past... so I hope this isn't a duplicate of an old thread. In any case, has anyone here looked over the documents and/or have any comments on them? It seems to me (however I have not yet read it) that something such as this could be quite useful to IT students and others who don't have the field experience. -- Regards Chris Gilbert
Re: Yahoo! -- A Phisher-friendly hosting domain?
That's good, however, I regret that the issue had to be aired here because it didn't get attention it deserved through proper channels and elsewhere... - ferg -- Florian Weimer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: But it caught my eye that SOMEBODY at Yahoo! ought to be reviewing domain names like bankofthewestupdate.com Registrars should as well, but this is not the way the Internet works. Sometimes, this is a good thing, sometimes, it's not. It seems that the A RR has been pulled around 2005-08-30 21:00 UTC, so this particular issue has already been resolved. -- Fergie, a.k.a. Paul Ferguson Engineering Architecture for the Internet [EMAIL PROTECTED] or [EMAIL PROTECTED] ferg's tech blog: http://fergdawg.blogspot.com/
Re: Yahoo! -- A Phisher-friendly hosting domain?
That's good, however, I regret that the issue had to be aired here because it didn't get attention it deserved through proper channels and elsewhere... If I read the timestamps correctly, your posting arrived via the NANOG list *after* the domain had been pulled.
Cisco as a First Responder?
Interestingly enough, there's an article on MSNBC: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9131498/ ...that talks about all of the gee whiz tech stuff that is getting deployed to assist in the aftermath of Katrina: [snip] Among the first high-tech responders was Cisco Systems, which is setting up mobile communication kits and wiki-based networks to deal with Katrina's information overload. Just wanted you to know that we will have 'feet on the wet street,' Cisco's Lori Bush reported in a posting to fellow members of the National Institute for Urban Search and Rescue. Some of the equipment, like the Cisco kits, can fit into a search-and-rescue effort instantly. Other gadgets are being put into service on the fly, in hopes of boosting the communication systems currently being used. And still others aren't yet ready for prime time but will be tested in real-world conditions. [snip] - ferg -- Fergie, a.k.a. Paul Ferguson Engineering Architecture for the Internet [EMAIL PROTECTED] or [EMAIL PROTECTED] ferg's tech blog: http://fergdawg.blogspot.com/
Re: Replacing PSTN with VoIP wise? Was Re: Phone networks struggle in Hurricane Katrina's wake
With VoIP, packet loss and delay eventually make the service useless. So VoIP fails harder than either traditional IP apps and PSTN. That is only in theory. In practice, during times of impending congestion collapse, IP network operators reconfigure the network to cope. For instance when DDoS is detected, people set up ACLs and trigger black hole routes. I think that it is possible for network operators to define an analogous action plan to stave off congestion collapse in an emergency situation. I'm not sure exactly what that action plan would look like, but I'm sure other list members will have plenty of good ideas. If you'll recall, just a few days ago people were talking about how they informally identified IP connectivity to emergency response sites so that those sites could be given priority in restoring service. We just need to sit down and talk these things over with our local emergency response organizations and learn where network operators can become part of the solution. On the other hand, in a circuit switched network you can do all kinds of interesting stuff (such as restarting all your control software) without breaking your sessions. We're only now seeing this in IP, and I think it's not really possible to reach the same levels with IP routing even in the long run. MPLS may have the edge here because you can have backup paths and fast reroute to keep traffic flowing if you have an orderly plan for rebooting routers. And voice over any kind of packet infrastructure introduces significant additional delays. Experience with the Inter-NOC phone system http://www.pch.net/inoc-dba/ seems to suggest otherwise. Some kinds of packet infrastructure only introduce insignificant delays. It would be interesting to know if any of the academics among us have studied the behavior of a SIP-based VoIP network during various types of failure and congestion scenarios. I suspect that problems will be mostly found under certain specific sets of conditions and if we know what those conditions are and how they impact voice services, then we can plan actions to mitigate the problems. One thing that IP network operators can do is throw bandwidth at a problem by shedding load, i.e. killing traffic that is deemed non-essential. This would free bandwidth for traffic that is deemed important. This has nothing to do with QoS per se becaus it can be implemented in many ways up to and including unplugging sites that generate non-essential traffic. All indications are that the next few decades will see an increased number of emergency situation like the tsunami, terror attacks in major cities, hurricanes, earthquakes. We have gotten very good at running the network through normal times, maybe we should now focus on how to keep it running through times of extreme stress. --Michael Dillon
Re: Cisco as a First Responder?
...that talks about all of the gee whiz tech stuff that is getting deployed to assist in the aftermath of Katrina: Turn walkie-talkies into VoIP devices http://www.dingotel.com/2way/index.asp Satellite IP modems http://www.starband.com/residential/index.asp Mobile WiFi mesh networks http://www.packethop.com/products/ http://www.rajant.com/models.htm And there is all kinds of rechargeable battery technology and fuel-cell technology that is capable of powering these devices. Solar cell rechargers, hand crank rechargers, etc. In addition to first aid kits and fire extinguishers in your offices, why not keep a backpack or two with this kind of technology and get together twice a year with your local competitors to exercise it all. --Michael Dillon
Katrina: directNIC Stays Online - Blog + Images
For those that don't know, directNIC as well as some other NOCs are located together in a high-rise in New Orleans. Despite everyone's warnings (including my own!) some tough-as-nails guys from directNIC stayed behind to battle the hurricane and keep the networks online. [snip] While the safety of our staff is paramount and most were safely evacuated, a small group of key personnel stayed behind to safeguard our data center and make sure that all of our services remained online and stable. During this time, while we spent a great deal of effort battling broken windows, incoming water, and flying debris, our hosting and registration services remained online and worked flawlessly. [/snip] Link: http://www.directnic.com/katrina.php (Pictures too!) It also mentions the power shortage, and that they are using diesel generated power. I remember a week or two ago people were talking about building redundant datacenters, off-grid power, failure mitigation, etc. I think if nothing else, this is at least a success story of building a NOC which can provide critical infrastructure that will survive major disasters. -- Regards, Chris Gilbert
Re: Katrina: directNIC Stays Online - Blog + Images
It also mentions the power shortage, and that they are using diesel generated power. I think if nothing else, this is at least a success story of building a NOC which can provide critical infrastructure that will survive major disasters. We know from the Mississippi river floods from a few years ago, that diesel generators are not sufficient in a major flood. The problem is that the diesel gets burned up before the roads are opened to resupply the fuel. It is too early to tell whether these guys can survive a major disaster. There is also the problem of water borne diseases, mosquitoes, and shift changes. The problems in New Orleans are just beginning. --Michael Dillon
Re: Katrina: directNIC Stays Online - Blog + Images
On Wed, 31 Aug 2005 15:47:43 +0200 Chris Gilbert [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: For those that don't know, directNIC as well as some other NOCs are located together in a high-rise in New Orleans. Despite everyone's warnings (including my own!) some tough-as-nails guys from directNIC stayed behind to battle the hurricane and keep the networks online. [snip] While the safety of our staff is paramount and most were safely evacuated, a small group of key personnel stayed behind to safeguard our data center and make sure that all of our services remained online and stable. During this time, while we spent a great deal of effort battling broken windows, incoming water, and flying debris, our hosting and registration services remained online and worked flawlessly. [/snip] Link: http://www.directnic.com/katrina.php (Pictures too!) It also mentions the power shortage, and that they are using diesel generated power. I remember a week or two ago people were talking about building redundant datacenters, off-grid power, failure mitigation, etc. I remember that after 9/11 the real network hits started about 3 days later, when the diesel generators started running out of fuel in the downtown telco hotels, and there was no way to physically get fuel trucks to their location. The equipment and generators were fine, they just ran out of fuel. If you look at the flooding in downtown New Orleans, it looks like this might happen again there. It makes me wonder whether part of disaster planning shouldn't be some sort of power triage, where if it looks like it's not going to be possible to get fuel to a datacenter after a systemwide power outage, instead of powering everything for a short time and then going dark, a subset is powered for weeks. Since I believe that air conditioning is a big part of the fuel expenditure, this might imply preplanning to the extent of grouping essential equipment together in a limited area that could be kept cool when everything else went dark. I think if nothing else, this is at least a success story of building a NOC which can provide critical infrastructure that will survive major disasters. -- Regards, Chris Gilbert Regards Marshall Eubanks
Re: Katrina: directNIC Stays Online - Blog + Images
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: We know from the Mississippi river floods from a few years ago, that diesel generators are not sufficient in a major flood. The problem is that the diesel gets burned up before the roads are opened to resupply the fuel. It is too early to tell whether these guys can survive a major disaster. There is also the problem of water borne diseases, mosquitoes, and shift changes. The problems in New Orleans are just beginning. --Michael Dillon I agree with your point on that we don't know if they will last the entire length of the ordeal. I was mostly pointing that they have survived the initial brunt of the ordeal, which IMHO is a pretty amazing accomplishment considering that POTS/Power/Cell have all gone down (or at least gone to hell) over there. As far as the fuel situation goes... [snip] /5:04 pm/ One of our employee's uncle has some kind of huge boat and he donated his diesel reserves to our cause. We're set for the time being as far as that goes. [/snip] Not very specific, but I suppose in the case of a flood this kind of thing would be immensely useful. It's not very applicable to the kind of disaster Marshall brought up, but in the case of a flood, moving diesel into the facility via boat seems to be a viable option. (For the time being) My main concern at this point is getting these guys food/water reliably. They can have all the diesel fuel in the world, but if they don't have supplies to live off of then it isn't going to make any difference. To me, this is a major area of interest as there seems to be a large amount of service convergence going on. People are moving from POTS onto VoIP, more and more formerly isolated long-distance networks are being moved onto the Internet, etc. What kind of operating protocols are being established for critical network infrastructure points? Suppose a major earthquake was to hit San Jose and take out fiber. How would that effect Arizona or Washington... what about Japan? Granted there are a lot of things that go into this. In a disaster situation, it's important to make sure that your machines and network continue operating, but what about provisioning to make sure you can keep NOC staff there? But that brings the question, just _how_important_ is the Internet and other networks? Should we go for far out of the way as to build NORAD style datacenters to protect our infrastructure... or are we willing to deal with a certain amount of network failure if the cost of mitigating it is over X amount? Just some food for thought. -- Regards, Chris Gilbert
Re: Phone networks struggle in Hurricane Katrina's wake
On Tue, Aug 30, 2005 at 03:48:52PM -1000, Randy Bush wrote: the steering committee has been discussing the idea of a nanog blog. of course it would be directed to operational content and not your daily pointer to some cartoon etc. Manners, Randy. Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth[EMAIL PROTECTED] Designer Baylink RFC 2100 Ashworth AssociatesThe Things I Think'87 e24 St Petersburg FL USA http://baylink.pitas.com +1 727 647 1274 NPR has a lot in common with Nascar... we both turn to the left. - Peter Sagal, on Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me!
Re: Katrina: directNIC Stays Online - Blog + Images
Not privy to directNic's full responsibilities, but of their public facing responsibilities I'm not sure DNS admininstrative activities are worth risking life and limb for. I guess there may be a need for some updates of DNS services due to the incident itself, or similar elsewhere, but in almost all cases this can be overridden further up the chain of DNS authority.
Boing Boing: Clearinghouse for Katrina tech assistance contacts
Since gripes here on the list about opsts regarding the Hurricane Katrina aftermath issues, I just wanted to point out that Bong Boing has seemingly become the clearinghouse for much tech info on efforts to provide some sort tech and communications assistance in the Gulf Coast region. So, I'd stay tuned over on Boing Boing if you want to stay in the loop on that particular issue: http://boingboing.net/ - ferg -- Fergie, a.k.a. Paul Ferguson Engineering Architecture for the Internet [EMAIL PROTECTED] or [EMAIL PROTECTED] ferg's tech blog: http://fergdawg.blogspot.com/
Re: Yahoo! -- A Phisher-friendly hosting domain?
Shouldn't someone be watching these, though? [EMAIL PROTECTED]:~# whois paypal.com [...] PAYPAL.COM.SV04.COM PAYPAL.COM.LIMITSPEED.NET PAYPAL.COM While I agree in concept that this is not how the internet runs, and I am not proposing a domain name police force be instituted, it seems to me that things like this are easily caught. Not to mention, the purpose of them is clear. On Wed, 31 Aug 2005, Fergie (Paul Ferguson) wrote: That's good, however, I regret that the issue had to be aired here because it didn't get attention it deserved through proper channels and elsewhere... - ferg -- Florian Weimer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: But it caught my eye that SOMEBODY at Yahoo! ought to be reviewing domain names like bankofthewestupdate.com Registrars should as well, but this is not the way the Internet works. Sometimes, this is a good thing, sometimes, it's not. It seems that the A RR has been pulled around 2005-08-30 21:00 UTC, so this particular issue has already been resolved. -- Fergie, a.k.a. Paul Ferguson Engineering Architecture for the Internet [EMAIL PROTECTED] or [EMAIL PROTECTED] ferg's tech blog: http://fergdawg.blogspot.com/ -- Alex Rubenstein, AR97, K2AHR, [EMAIL PROTECTED], latency, Al Reuben Net Access Corporation, 800-NET-ME-36, http://www.nac.net
Re: Katrina: directNIC Stays Online - Blog + Images
Simon Waters [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [...] I guess there may be a need for some updates of DNS services due to the incident itself, or similar elsewhere, but in almost all cases this can be overridden further up the chain of DNS authority. I live just a mile down the road from the ISP I work at. Given the choice of sitting at home (no power, probably no roof), or hiding in the NOC (warm, internal room with no windows, has a shower and cooking facilities) and being *paid* for it, I'll heroically man the ship (as opposed to cowardly hiding at work). -- PGP key ID E85DC776 - finger [EMAIL PROTECTED] for full key /:.*posting.google.com.*/HX-Trace:+j
RE: Katrina: directNIC Stays Online - Blog + Images
Some ISPs managed to get FEMA to let a tanker through and that's how we're back up. It wasn't pretty though. Marshall Eubanks: I remember that after 9/11 the real network hits started about 3 days later, when the diesel generators started running out of fuel in the downtown telco hotels, and there was no way to physically get fuel trucks to their location. The equipment and generators were fine, they just ran out of fuel. If you look at the flooding in downtown New Orleans, it looks like this might happen again there.
Re: Phone networks struggle in Hurricane Katrina's wake
Sorry for the interruption but I wish just once I could follow a topical list where 50% or more of the traffic wasn't people posting or arguing about how this or that post was off-topic! The meta-banter gets worse than the banter; the latter at least usually touches on some possibly interesting subject such as phishing policies or Katrina or FCC/VOIP issues, unlike the meta-banter. A SUGGESTION (this isn't just more meta-banter) A committee (of one or more) with an alias who become generally understood as being the SOLE SOURCE of polite that's off-topic postings, and an alias others who wish someone would point out that a thread or post is off-topic can send that suggestion to rather than any number of people buzzing the entire list with their complaint. I realize it won't be perfect and there'll be leaks but maybe it'll come to be a commonly accepted convention with some prodding and routine announcements etc. Call it: nanog-ombudsman (nanog-ombudsperson?), whatever, nanog-meta? Sorry for the meta-banter and no I'm not volunteering mainly because I honestly don't think I'm qualified to judge what is on/off-topic as this note amply demonstrates. -- -Barry Shein The World | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.TheWorld.com Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 800-THE-WRLD| Login: Nationwide Software Tool Die| Public Access Internet | SINCE 1989 *oo*
Re: Replacing PSTN with VoIP wise? Was Re: Phone networks struggle in Hurricane Katrina's wake
Iljitsch van Beijnum wrote: There are two types of VoIP: voice over a private, tightly controlled IP network, and voice over the public internet. Now obviously the latter is a risky proposition, as it imports all the limitations of the internet into the voice service. I'm not so sure; someone cuts an ISDN-30 into our building and the sky falls down. Someone cuts some fibre carrying IP and life (and communications) carry on .. Perhaps you've made a fair and good comment on the marurity of most off-the-shelf voip products or implementations. But the key, in my mind, is that VoIP across the internet, when done well, imports all of the opportunities of internet routing into voice service. -a
Re: Replacing PSTN with VoIP wise? Was Re: Phone networks struggle in Hurricane Katrina's wake
--On August 31, 2005 2:03:01 PM +0100 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: ... On the other hand, in a circuit switched network you can do all kinds of interesting stuff (such as restarting all your control software) without breaking your sessions. We're only now seeing this in IP, and I think it's not really possible to reach the same levels with IP routing even in the long run. MPLS may have the edge here because you can have backup paths and fast reroute to keep traffic flowing if you have an orderly plan for rebooting routers. Which does us no good in the case that we're close to the edge device and need to reboot the control plane of a nearby router. To me it seems Juniper and Cisco are both making huge steps in understanding this is necessary technology they can 'borrow' from telco's. You've a highly intelligent, but fairly decoupled control plane, with a fairly dumb, but largely automatic 'forwarding' or 'circuit fabric' plane being directed by the control plane. If the control plane takes a nap, the bottom end continues what it was doing until something (control plane coming back online, backup control plane doing takeover) tells it otherwise. No this isn't easily possible in most instances, even with just bare IP and with NAT it becomes really difficult because of the large amount of intelligence (relatively speaking) required to handle NAT. I should clarify that when I say NAT I mean PNAT and application/protocol specific NAT that requires more than just simple packet mangling. I think though, that eventually this will be commonplace, certainly in the core, and even really close to the edges. the M10i's approach this sort of resiliency. the T series and the larger M series also work like thisI think that the ONS' also are pushing on this (though admittedly aren't exactly IP...) Anyway, point is, that if you're right up close to the edge, MPLS may not matter, towards the core sure, where you're away from actual end connections and there's redundancy around you when you need to do a control plane restart. There will always be upgrades. Further there will always be other issues, however, in my mind atleast, today's networks are far more resilient and faster to heal than they've been in the past, atleast in IP PSTN...well...They're reliability king, until something unexpected happens. There were reports on here I believe it was even about call routing issues during this outage, not capacity type issues, simple lack of the systems ability to reconfigure and cope with loss of connectivity. There are places for both PSTN and IP though.
Re: Replacing PSTN with VoIP wise? Was Re: Phone networks struggle in Hurricane Katrina's wake
On Wed, 31 Aug 2005 20:19:23 BST, Andy Davidson said: Perhaps you've made a fair and good comment on the marurity of most off-the-shelf voip products or implementations. But the key, in my mind, is that VoIP across the internet, when done well, imports all of the opportunities of internet routing into voice service. The crucial point being that when done well is something that you usually can't evaluate until it's too late. And there's maturity level for more than just products and implementations. It's clearly possible to find telco engineers with 5/10/15 years experience in running PSTN (might even find somebody with 40-50 years? :). It's possible to find network engineers with lots of BGP experience. Where do you find a senior engineer with 5+ years experience in enterprise-scale VoIP deployment? pgp8HAOS0l7C5.pgp Description: PGP signature
the right list to use for talking about nanog is nanog-futures
On 31-Aug-2005, at 14:52, Barry Shein wrote: Sorry for the interruption but I wish just once I could follow a topical list where 50% or more of the traffic wasn't people posting or arguing about how this or that post was off-topic! As Randy alluded earlier, the right list to use for this kind of meta- nanog discussion right now is [EMAIL PROTECTED] echo subscribe nanog-futures | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.merit.edu/mail.archives/nanog-futures/ This is absolutely the right place to make your opinions heard about mailing list policy, about blog entries or news articles being pasted onto the list, about exactly what is and what should be off-topic on the main list, and about the opportunities for venting frustration if someone says you're off-topic when you swear you're not. And all kinds of other stuff that ideally would never show up on the main list. I imagine it will make the lives of the over-worked, volunteer mailing list administrator team much easier if these meta-threads could head to nanog-futures right away. It would also make this particular SC member, speaking personally, very happy if the discussions could move there rather than simply ceasing. This is all important stuff to hear. Joe PGP.sig Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: Replacing PSTN with VoIP wise? Was Re: Phone networks struggle in Hurricane Katrina's wake
On 31-aug-2005, at 21:19, Andy Davidson wrote: There are two types of VoIP: voice over a private, tightly controlled IP network, and voice over the public internet. Now obviously the latter is a risky proposition, as it imports all the limitations of the internet into the voice service. I'm not so sure; someone cuts an ISDN-30 into our building and the sky falls down. Yes, single homing sucks. Someone cuts some fibre carrying IP and life (and communications) carry on .. You can get your ISDN 30 over redundant fibers too, that's not the problem. Perhaps you've made a fair and good comment on the marurity of most off-the-shelf voip products or implementations. But the key, in my mind, is that VoIP across the internet, when done well, imports all of the opportunities of internet routing into voice service. You say that as if it's a good thing. :-) I think in the long run, it makes sense to have end-to-end IP calls over the internet. However, this is not going to be as reliable as the PSTN for many years to come, because there are is no inter-AS QoS deployment, routing protocols take their sweet time (180 seconds BGP timeout anyone?) and the internet is becoming fairly non-transparent because of all the goo people keep pouring into the machinery in the name of security and the like. However, using the public internet as a local loop is bad. Here in the Netherlands, the incumbent telco isn't allowed to lower its prices, but everyone (including the incumbent telco) can sell voice minutes to PSTN destinations over an IP local loop for any price they want. So basically they're forced to kill off the local leg of the PSTN to be able to compete on medium/long distance. This is not good. Not so long ago, when there was a failure in the long distance infrastructure, you could still make local calls. With the current intelligent networks that's not always the case anymore, but if the emergency number stuff is done properly, you can still call 911/112 when the long distance stuff is down. With inet local loop that will no longer be the case in most cities. But then, people don't really care about this, as cell is in the exact same boat and huge numbers of people rely on just their cell phone and no longer have a fixed line (in Europe at least).
Re: Yahoo! -- A Phisher-friendly hosting domain?
On Wed, 31 Aug 2005, Fergie (Paul Ferguson) wrote: Someone is... or trying to, at least, watch and contact the responsible owners/registrars, but in some cases they aren't apparently eager to assist. Some registrars are good and some are bad and without better controls being developed by ICANN, user-based reputation system will eventually come in and will be greatly despised by registrars (like many ISPs do not like RBLs) but nonetheless widely used by users. -- Alex Rubenstein [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Shouldn't someone be watching these, though? [EMAIL PROTECTED]:~# whois paypal.com [...] PAYPAL.COM.SV04.COM PAYPAL.COM.LIMITSPEED.NET PAYPAL.COM Above are hostnames under another domain that were registered as nameservers (which seems to be mostly for fun so it would show up in whois for those using less-then-smart whois clients). I don't think above names have anything to do with phishing at all since for phishing one could easily just setup host paypal.phisherdomain.com (without any registration in whois), but that is not widely used and a lot more common are attempts at something like paypa1.com. -- William Leibzon Elan Networks [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: the right list to use for talking about nanog is nanog-futures
From: Joe Abley [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: the right list to use for talking about nanog is nanog-futures Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2005 16:20:27 -0400 To: NANOG list nanog@merit.edu On 31-Aug-2005, at 14:52, Barry Shein wrote: Sorry for the interruption but I wish just once I could follow a topical list where 50% or more of the traffic wasn't people posting or arguing about how this or that post was off-topic! As Randy alluded earlier, the right list to use for this kind of meta- nanog discussion right now is [EMAIL PROTECTED] echo subscribe nanog-futures | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.merit.edu/mail.archives/nanog-futures/ This is absolutely the right place to make your opinions heard about mailing list policy, about blog entries or news articles being pasted onto the list, about exactly what is and what should be off-topic on the main list, and about the opportunities for venting frustration if someone says you're off-topic when you swear you're not. And all kinds of other stuff that ideally would never show up on the main list. I imagine it will make the lives of the over-worked, volunteer mailing list administrator team much easier if these meta-threads could head to nanog-futures right away. It would also make this particular SC member, speaking personally, very happy if the discussions could move there rather than simply ceasing. This is all important stuff to hear. Joe the [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list is broken. evidently, this has been the case for some time. maybe nanog has no future :-). over the last 24 hours, the steering committee has made a number of urgent requests to merit to fix this problem asap. our apologies. randy
Peering Contact Database
Hey. Hopefully this is operational. If someone could send me a copy of the current (or most recent) Peering Contact Database. I know Bill Norton used to distribute it, but I seem to have fallen off the distribution list or its getting eaten by my spam filters. (really operational: I want to make sure there are no prospective peers at Equinix/Ashburn that I may have missed on my last survey). Thanks, Deepak Jain AiNET
Re: Peering Contact Database
On Aug 31, 2005, at 6:02 PM, Deepak Jain wrote: Hey. Hopefully this is operational. If someone could send me a copy of the current (or most recent) Peering Contact Database. I know Bill Norton used to distribute it, but I seem to have fallen off the distribution list or its getting eaten by my spam filters. (really operational: I want to make sure there are no prospective peers at Equinix/Ashburn that I may have missed on my last survey). www.peeringdb.com? It's easy, and free! Otherwise, Equinix's web site has some info as well. -- TTFN, patrick
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August 2005: Drone Army Botnet CC listing
Keeping is step with Gadi's language from last month: Below is a periodic public report from the Drone Army(DA)/Botnet Research and mitigation mailing list. For this report it should be noted that we base our analysis on the data we have accumulated from various sources. According to our analysis of information we have conducted thus far, we are now publishing our regular reports, with some additional information, which may vary from time to time, as needed. As of this July 2005, any responsible party that wishes to receive information about botnet CC's in their net space can contact us and be added to our notification list. The principle contact is Paul Ferguson (Fergie). - ferg Special appreciation is due to Staminus who took quick action to resolve the suspect CCs of the last report and rapidly resolved all of the suspect CCs which appeared during this current survey. AS responsible Parties ranked by top 10 open unresolved suspect CCs: ASN Responsible Party Total Open 30058 FDCSERVERS - FDCservers.net LL 123 43 21840 SAGONET-TPA - Sago Networks 53 26 13680 AS13680 Hostway Corporation Ta 23 23 15083 INFOLINK-MIA-US - Infolink Inf 37 21 6461MFNX MFN - Metromedia Fiber Ne 28 17 8560SCHLUND-AS Schlund + Partner A 26 17 30083 SERVER4YOU - Server4You Inc.37 16 13237 LAMBDANET-AS European Backbone 15 12 9800UNICOM CHINA UNICOM 14 11 27645 ASN-NA-MSG-01 - Managed Soluti 18 11 Historical Report ranked by past suspect CCs mapping into the AS: ASN Responsible Party Total OpenPercent Resolved 14742 INTERNAP-BLOCK-4 - Internap Ne 142 2 99% 14744 30058 FDCSERVERS - FDCservers.net LL 123 43 65% 10913 INTERNAP-BLK - Internap Networ 84 0 100% 25761 STAMINUS-COMM - Staminus Commu 58 0 100% 21840 SAGONET-TPA - Sago Networks 53 26 51% 3356LEVEL3 Level 3 Communications 43 5 88% 21844 THEPLANET-AS - THE PLANET 38 5 87% 30083 SERVER4YOU - Server4You Inc.37 16 57% 15083 INFOLINK-MIA-US - Infolink Inf 37 21 43% 11739 DIGITAL-FOREST-NW - digital.fo 29 0 100% 16237 NXS Nxs Internet BV 29 0 100% The report summary includes a Percent Resolved Column in order to recognize the mitigation efforts of the AS Responsible Parties. The Opens Unresolved column represents the number of unique CC which reported as open to the survey's connection attempts and which have neither been investigated nor cleared by the Responsible Party (to the extent of our knowledge). The Total mapping count may include multiple names mapping to a single IP within an AS. We count each mapping count as a unique CC. Stats for the DA group compiled by: Randal Vaughn Professor Information Systems Baylor University Randy_Vaughn (at) Baylor.edu -- Fergie, a.k.a. Paul Ferguson Engineering Architecture for the Internet [EMAIL PROTECTED] or [EMAIL PROTECTED] ferg's tech blog: http://fergdawg.blogspot.com/
RE: August 2005: Drone Army Botnet CC listing
30058 FDCSERVERS - FDCservers.net LL 123 43 21840 SAGONET-TPA - Sago Networks 53 26 Much better. And no IL-CERT. :-) Is it safe to say the resolutions, at least in these two cases, are because of others mitigation activities i.e. snatching back the RR's, shutting off the domain, black holes, etc? -M
RE: August 2005: Drone Army Botnet CC listing
Yes. And thanks. - ferg -- Hannigan, Martin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 30058 FDCSERVERS - FDCservers.net LL 123 43 21840 SAGONET-TPA - Sago Networks 53 26 Much better. And no IL-CERT. :-) Is it safe to say the resolutions, at least in these two cases, are because of others mitigation activities i.e. snatching back the RR's, shutting off the domain, black holes, etc? -M -- Fergie, a.k.a. Paul Ferguson Engineering Architecture for the Internet [EMAIL PROTECTED] or [EMAIL PROTECTED] ferg's tech blog: http://fergdawg.blogspot.com/
Re: This fall in LA
Susan Harris wrote: http://www.arin.net/ARIN-XVI/ipv6_workshop.html https://www.merit.edu/nanog/registration.form.html Does anyone besides me notice that there is no venue listed on either page? Or am I just missing something? -- Steve Sobol, Professional Geek 888-480-4638 PGP: 0xE3AE35ED Company website: http://JustThe.net/ Personal blog, resume, portfolio: http://SteveSobol.com/ E: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Snail: 22674 Motnocab Road, Apple Valley, CA 92307
Re: TIA-942 Datacenter Standardization
Eesh... I grabbed a copy of this thing. In a cursory over-read... I am afraid if people (people defined by lim(clue) - 0) start implementing datacenters by this guide. This would be a BRILLIANT document as the reading material for a college-level course. However, I'd be concerned if a CxO reads this and assumes they are great if the document has no conflicts with their implementation and they think they are in good shae. Before I comment publicly on the issues I think I have with it, I want to verify that the points I raise aren't covered in some sort of disclaimer about being out of scope etc. Essentially 90% of the conversations folks have on nanog about datacenter designs are outside of what this advocates building (in a very cursory overread). DJ Chris Gilbert wrote: [snip] The Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) -- the people who brought you the CAT standards for unshielded twisted pair cabling -- recently undertook a vast challenge to publish a definitive document encompassing best practices and design considerations for every single aspect of the modern data center. The standard, entitled Telecommunications Infrastructure Standard for Data Centers, TIA-942, weighs in at 148 pages, and covers everything from site selection to rack mounting methods. [/snip] Link: http://searchdatacenter.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid80_gci1120625,00.html Also: http://www.tiaonline.org/media/press_releases/index.cfm?parelease=05-46 I seem to remember some folks asking questions about such a thing here in the past... so I hope this isn't a duplicate of an old thread. In any case, has anyone here looked over the documents and/or have any comments on them? It seems to me (however I have not yet read it) that something such as this could be quite useful to IT students and others who don't have the field experience. -- Regards Chris Gilbert
Re: TIA-942 Datacenter Standardization
At 10:20 PM 8/31/2005, you wrote: Eesh... I grabbed a copy of this thing. In a cursory over-read... I am afraid if people (people defined by lim(clue) - 0) start implementing datacenters by this guide. This would be a BRILLIANT document as the reading material for a college-level course. However, I'd be concerned if a CxO reads this and assumes they are great if the document has no conflicts with their implementation and they think they are in good shae. Before I comment publicly on the issues I think I have with it, I want to verify that the points I raise aren't covered in some sort of disclaimer about being out of scope etc. Essentially 90% of the conversations folks have on nanog about datacenter designs are outside of what this advocates building (in a very cursory overread). We have already been asked about where our datacenters fit in with the TIA942 spec in several RFPs! It does cover some good topics, but it also leaves out the design and structure of many things which are far more likely to cause an outage than the copper and fiber physical plants. -R Tellurian Networks - The Ultimate Internet Connection http://www.tellurian.com | 888-TELLURIAN | 973-300-9211 Well done is better than well said. - Benjamin Franklin
Re: TIA-942 Datacenter Standardization
We have already been asked about where our datacenters fit in with the TIA942 spec in several RFPs! It does cover some good topics, but it also leaves out the design and structure of many things which are far more likely to cause an outage than the copper and fiber physical plants. Yeah... and it introduces/codifies the concept of tiers of datacenters... Yet, its possible to be have tier 4 access to telecommunications while being a tier 1 datacenter to operate those telecommunications, or vice versa. What bothers me as significantly as this tier stuff is that redundancies, procedures, staffing, testing, policies are only mentioned, but not actually discussed (such as the why's, or how to test for the condition). They refer to specific technologies... like RAID as an application for a tier 4 facility. They mention colocation and internet data centers, but don't discuss or even address how your facilities survivability is not fundamentally affected by non-carrier grade equipment being installed by customers -- yet, not surprisingly, the tier 4 definition specifically talks about all the equipment installed in the datacenter. There is lots of hand waving... like beware the EPO. And yet, it doesn't discuss how facilities like Exodus's NJ facility that had all the power outages or Equinix/Ashburn and Equinix/Chicago which presumably meet at least, the Tier-3 specifications by design... still fail when they are implemented poorly. That 99.99% and above availability have more to do with maintenance and procedures than the equipment you installed initially. Its more of a document I'd expect to spend a ridiculous some of money to have a consultant produce, not someone who should know better. Great college guide book to discuss issues though. Deepak Jain AiNET
Re: Replacing PSTN with VoIP wise? Was Re: Phone networks struggle in Hurricane Katrina's wake
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: It's clearly possible to find telco engineers with 5/10/15 years experience in running PSTN (might even find somebody with 40-50 years? :). It's possible to find network engineers with lots of BGP experience. Where do you find a senior engineer with 5+ years experience in enterprise-scale VoIP deployment? Deployable enterprise VoIP products existed in 1998. So it would be somebody who was there doing it back then? Goes 5+ with a margin. Pete
