Word Usage (was Re: Elad Cohen)

[James Downs via NANOG]

For the record:

Slander is false *spoken* statements.
Libel is false *written* statements.

HTH, HAND.

Re: What can ISPs do better? Removing racism out of internet

[James Downs]

On Mon, Aug 05, 2019 at 12:24:55PM -0400, Bryan Fields wrote:

> contract.  This scares the shit out of me as a customer; could cloudflare
> decide to give me no notice and shut my services off?

So much for the "free-speech absolutist".

Re: OT: Tech bag

[James Downs]

On Fri, Aug 02, 2019 at 11:19:08AM -0500, Hunter Fuller wrote:

> This one has since been released, and it has a laptop compartment. My

Yeah, I definitely look for some sort of laptop compartment. If not
padded on its own, I stick the laptop into a padded sleeve. I run one
of these: https://tacticalgear.com/511-all-hazards-prime-backpack-black

And subdivide for a particular loadout with various smaller cases like:
https://countycomm.com/collections/view-all-storage-products/products/apx-multi-purpose-dual-zip-case-by-maratac

or something similar to these: 
https://www.casesbysource.com/category/soft-padded-cases

Unfortunately Deep Outdoors, who made a number of great soft-sided padded cases
has gone out of business...

Re: 44/8

[James Downs]

> On Jul 23, 2019, at 18:44, Owen DeLong  wrote:
> 
> Not entirely true. A lot of 44/8 subnets are used for transporting amateur 
> radio information across the internet and/or for certain limited applications 
> linking amateur radio and the internet. 

In the mid 90's we (an ISP) announced the space for WI's packet community. If 
it didn't need internet connectivity, you wouldn't need the IP addresses, 
necessarily.

Also, from the AMPR website: https://www.ampr.org/about/

"We don’t sell addresses; you might consider an AMPRNet allocation to be in the 
nature of an extended loan of IP space, which is, of course, subject to our 
Terms of Service."

And of course, from: https://www.ampr.org/terms-of-service/

> 5. What You may not do
> 
> You may NOT sell, exchange, transfer, or otherwise obtain anything of value 
> for the address(es). You are not permitted to use the address(es) for 
> commercial purposes, nor in a manner which would be to the detriment of the 
> AMPRNet or to Amateur Radio.
> 
> 6. What You are agreeing to
> 
> All address(es) licensed to You remain the sole and exclusive property of 
> ARDC. You do not obtain any rights, title, or interest in the address(es) nor 
> in the AMPRNet.
> 
> You may not assign any monetary value to the addresses.
...
> 8. Definitions
> 
> “Amateur”, “ham”, “operator”, means a person or group licensed under the 
> terms of the Amateur Radio Service as defined by the International 
> Telecommunication Union (ITU) as implemented by their country’s government, 
> e.g., in the USA, under 47CFR97.
> 
> “AMPRNet” means the network 44/8; that is, all Internet IP addresses from 
> 44.0.0.0 through 44.255.255.255.

And also from: http://wiki.ampr.org/wiki/Main_Page

> Since its allocation to Amateur Radio in the mid-1980's, Internet network 44 
> (44.0.0.0/8), known as the AMPRNet™,
...
>   • This page was last edited on 5 April 2014, at 04:32.

They certainly seem to be claiming to have ownership of something not assigned 
to them, and in conflict with their own stated TOS.

What seems additionally strange is that according to the addressing agreement 
from 1986, according to wikipedia, "The allocation plan agreed in late-1986 
mandated 44.0/9 (~8 million addresses) for use within the United States, under 
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations;[6] and mandated 44.128/9 
(~8 million addresses) for the Rest-of-World deployment, outside of FCC 
regulations.[6]"

Re: A Zero Spam Mail System [Feedback Request]

[James Downs]

> On Feb 17, 2019, at 19:26, valdis.kletni...@vt.edu wrote:

> I was thinking more of the guy who was convinced that each octet in an IPV4
> address could store 0 through 256.

That's what the overflow flag is for, right?

Re: the e-mail of the future is the e-mail oft the past, was Enough port 26 talk...

[James Downs]

On Tue, Jan 15, 2019 at 06:46:07PM +0100, Tei wrote:

> Is very hard to replace a open protocol,  wrapping may work if the
> protocol is mostly abandoned (IRC) but thats not the case for email.

IRC is far from abandonded. There are lots of very active networks,
2 of which I use continously.

But, it's been a week of non-NANOG talk, so

Cheers,
-j

Re: (Netflix/GlobalConnect a/s) Scheduled Open Connect Appliance upgrade is starting

[James Downs]

On Sun, Jan 13, 2019 at 06:01:24PM -0800, Seth Mattinen wrote:

> That's the primary reason I am plain text only: people that think 
> they're being whimsical by picking fonts and colors that are hard to read.

Now if only we could get everyone to stop top-posting.

Re: SMTP Over TLS on Port 26 - Implicit TLS Proposal [Feedback Request]

[James Downs]

> On Jan 12, 2019, at 08:14, Viruthagiri Thirumavalavan  wrote:

> My solution is intended for clients. A client should decide whether to 
> transmit mails in clear text or not. 

You should spend some time doing research by reading RFCs, and doing a little 
searching on the internet. Your proposal, would, canonically be called SMTPS.

If you put that into a search engine, you'll find not only is it deprecated, 
but has an assigned port number of 465.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMTPS

Re: Rising sea levels are going to mess with the internet

[James Downs]

On Thu, Jul 26, 2018 at 03:49:13PM -0400, valdis.kletni...@vt.edu wrote:

> Compound interest is a bitch.

Sure is, but a numerically fixed change YoY is not compound interest.

Re: California fires: smart speakers and emergency alerts

[James Downs]

On Thu, Jul 26, 2018 at 12:31:31PM -0500, Chris Boyd wrote:

> That’s about 1.85 meter wavelength, so a quarter wave antenna would be pretty 
> large.  I’m sure the RF engineers can come up with a way to listen 
> effectively without a huge antenna.

For 162Mhz, a 1/4 wave antenna would have a vertical radiating element of 
around 17".
However, for receive only purposes, it's not necessary that the antenna be 
resonant. You can demonstrate this yourself with any FM radio and a paperclip.

Cheers,
-j

Re: Companies using public IP space owned by others for internal routing

[James Downs]

> On Dec 17, 2017, at 14:33, Matt Hoppes  
> wrote:
> 
> Had a previous employee or I discovered it on the network segment after we 
> had some weird routing issues and had to get that cleaned up. I don't know 
> why anyone would do that when there is tons of private IP space.

Unless there isn't.. I've worked at more than one company that had used up all 
the private space. Then you have the cases where some M causes overlapping IP 
space. In addition, you'd also be surprised how many people just assign the 
entire 10/8 space into a flat IP space.

-j

Re: Conference Videos

[James Downs]

On Mon, Mar 13, 2017 at 04:52:01PM -0500, Mike Hammett wrote:
> Another organization I'm in has a hard policy of no recordings of any 
> sessions at their conferences. They think that recordings of content (even 
> vendor-sponsored, vendor-specific sessions with vendor consent) would have a 
> catastrophic effect on conference attendance. 

Check out the Openstack Summits, a conference that records *everything*, and 
attendence keeps going up.

Cheers,
-j

Re: Accepting a Virtualized Functions (VNFs) into Corporate IT

[James Downs]

On Mon, Nov 28, 2016 at 09:53:41AM -0800, Kasper Adel wrote:

> Would this be an acceptable offering in today's IT from different type of
> Enterprises (Minux the Googles, Facebooks...etc) ?

The comments from others on this thread have some good points to make,
but in my experience, even at places that outsource to SaaS, a black
box on the internal network isn't going to fly.

Cheers,
-j

Re: Death of the Internet, Film at 11

[James Downs]

> On Oct 21, 2016, at 17:39, Ronald F. Guilmette  wrote:

> P.S.  To all of you Ayn Rand devotees out there who still vociferously
> argue that it's nobody else's business how you monitor or police your
> "private" networks, and who still refuse to take even minimalist steps

What does Ayn Rand have to do with it? She would hardly countenance 
incompetence.

Re: Thank you, Comcast.

[James Downs]

> On Feb 26, 2016, at 06:31, Keith Medcalf  wrote:
> 
> ISP's should block nothing, to or from the customer, unless they make it 
> clear *before* selling the service (and include it in the Terms and 
> Conditions of Service Contract), that they are not selling an Internet 
> connection but are selling a partially functional Internet connection (or a 
> limited Internet Service), and specifying exactly what the built-in 
> deficiencies are.

Absolutely. It’s funny that a group that worries about about net neutrality and 
whinges about T-Mobile’s zero-rating certain video sources is perfectly fine 
with blindly blocking *ports*, without even understanding if it’s legitimate 
traffic.

> Deficiencies may include:
>  port/protocol blockage toward the customer (destination blocks)
>  port/protocol blockage toward the internet (source blocks)
>  DNS diddling (filtering of responses, NXDOMAIN redirection/wildcards, etc)

This would be a big reason to point to a different DNS...

>  Traffic Shaping/Policing/Congestion policies, inbound and outbound
> 
> Some ISPs are good at this and provide opt-in/out methods for at least the 
> first three on the list.  Others not so much.

Re: Google Contact

[James Downs]

> On Jan 26, 2016, at 09:40, Adam Loveless  wrote:
> 
> Any Google engineers that can contact me off list? Seems our address space
> has been blacklisted by Google and we have to enter captchas for them now.

Is that the capture that happens in front of certain websites? I had that 
happen for two totally unrelated IP blocks. They eventually cleared within a 
day or two, but I think they’re having problems with the detection systems. The 
captcha also didn’t work right for the site I was trying to access (hackernews).

Re: Verizon E-Mail Contact

[James Downs]

> On Jan 19, 2016, at 14:39, Brielle Bruns  wrote:
> 
> On 1/18/16 10:38 AM, Brielle Bruns wrote:

>> visit 550 http://www.verizon.net/whitelist and request removal of the
>> block. 160118)

> It's really really hard to contact your support department, Verizon, if you 
> have the same filters in place on your whitelist@ address as you do on the 
> rest of your e-mail addresses.


Also, "The requested URL /whitelist/ was not found on this server.”

Re: de-peering for security sake

[James Downs]

> On Dec 26, 2015, at 12:34, Owen DeLong  wrote:
> 
> Also, note that the only difference between a good long passphrase and a 
> private key is,
> uh, wait, um, come to think of it, really not much.

Are you equating a long PSK with PKE? They’re quite different.

Re: Broadband Router Comparisons

[James Downs]

> On Dec 27, 2015, at 20:00, Keith Medcalf  wrote:

> They end up with ALL the data they can capture; they have COMPLETE management 
> control; and, can execute whatever code they want, without your prior 
> approval or choice, on the device at any time they please, including 
> permanent changes in the software and configuration.

What’s what I assume as well. This makes it, and the nest, and any related 
devices unwelcome.

Re: Broadband Router Comparisons

[James Downs]

> On Dec 27, 2015, at 17:56, Mike  wrote:

> The device would be cisco or juniper branded, internal redundancy / failover 
> features to allow hitless upgrades or module failures, have dual (preferably, 

After the last week or so, I wouldn’t trust a service provider who insisted on 
installing juniper at my site.

Re: Broadband Router Comparisons

[James Downs]

> On Dec 27, 2015, at 09:43, Hugo Slabbert  wrote:

> Hence: https://on.google.com/hub/

The device looks cool, and sounds cool, but what data does google end up with, 
and what remote management can they do? Their policy pages aren’t exactly 
clear, and they’ve mishandled personal data a number of times previously.

Re: [TECH] Pica8 & Cumulus Networks

[James Downs]

> On Nov 1, 2015, at 23:53, Yoann THOMAS  wrote:

> Under a Cloud project I ask myself to use equipment based on the Pica8 or 
> Cumulus Networks.

We’ve had some great conversations with Cumulus, but more generally, I think 
you need to look at the cloud project’s goals. Those should help inform your 
decision making process. Specifically, what are your SDN and generally, 
networking needs and use cases.

> All in order to mount a Spine & Leaf architecture
> 
> - Spine 40Gbps
> - Leaf in 10Gbps

In a new cloud deployment of any size, you probably want more than 10G to the 
compute servers, especially if you’re carrying storage traffic.

> 
> Someone of you there a feedback on this equipment.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Yoann THOMAS
> CTO - Castle-IT

Cheers,
-j

Re: VUDU thinks my network is out of the country

[James Downs]

> On Sep 17, 2015, at 08:46, Brett A Mansfield  
> wrote:
> 
> I need a good contact at VUDU. I have several customers that use it that 
> cannot. They gave us a workaround where each and every individual customer 
> needs to call in and get their IP unblocked, but they aren't unblocking them 
> anymore.

Who were you talking to previously?

Cheers,
-j

Re: Software Defined Networking

[James Downs]

> On Sep 4, 2015, at 07:40, Rod Beck  wrote:
> 
> Can anyone provide references on this top so I can educate myself?

What do you mean when you say “software defined networking”? Do you have a 
particular problem or use case you are approaching?

Cheers,
-j

Re: Data Center operations mail list?

[James Downs]

 On Aug 11, 2015, at 06:01, Rafael Possamai raf...@gav.ufsc.br wrote:

 style as nanog and registered the nadcog.org domain.

Nad Cog?

Re: ARIN IPV4 Countdown

[James Downs]

 On Jul 14, 2015, at 16:09, Curtis Maurand cmaur...@xyonet.com wrote:
 
 i think IPV6 adoption is going to be very slow.  It's very difficult for the 
 layman to understand and that contributes to the slow rate of uptake.

Who is the layman in this story? Almost every system I work with at home and in 
the datacenter has IPv6 turned on by default. If someone wandered through those 
networks, and started turning on IPv6 infrastructure so that they started 
getting IPv6 addresses, my bet is that most of the java-based applications 
would already be bound to the stacks in such a way that they would just start 
sending traffic over IPv6. I base this on the fact that any number of 
developers have been confused by “::” being somewhere in their world now. Those 
people don’t care about the network, or IPv4 vs IPv6. It would just work.

Now, if layman == Network Operators, and Networking people at Corporations, 
well, there you might be right.

Cheers,
-j

Re: Lists of VPN exit addresses?

[James Downs]

 On Jun 10, 2015, at 05:08, Roland Dobbins rdobb...@arbor.net wrote:

 Another thought is governmentally-driven censorship, something else I 
 encounter a lot in my travels.

I was talking a few weeks ago with a developer type from China who said 
something to the effect of “Hosted X is a problem because while developer types 
have experience getting around firewalls, [manager types] do not…”

Re: Lists of VPN exit addresses?

[James Downs]

 On Jun 10, 2015, at 17:25, Roland Dobbins rdobb...@arbor.net wrote:
 
 Yes, we all know that technical people can generally get around these sorts 
 of blocks, and non-technical people all too often can't.
 
 The majority of people aren't technical (using Facebook and Instagram all day 
  technical).

I thought your point was that you encounter governmentally-driven censorship 
frequently in your travels, and you were in favor of making it easier to get 
around it. The need for this was what my anecdote was meant to illustrate.

Re: gmail security is a joke

[James Downs]

 On May 27, 2015, at 11:22, John R. Levine jo...@iecc.com wrote:

 As I've said a couple of times already, but perhaps without the capital 
 letters, from a security point of view, generating a NEW PASSWORD and sending 
 it in cleartext is no worse than sending you a one time reset link.  Either 
 way, if a bad guy can intercept your mail, you lose.

Well, no… a one time reset link is infinitely better than sending a cleartext 
password, assuming you don’t have to immediately change the password.

A reset link, being usable once, means that you can detect if an attacker has 
already used it. If you use it first, the attacker has a useless link. If an 
attacker gets a cleartext password, you probably can’t detect interception.

Cheers,
-j

Re: Galaxy S6 is IPv6 on all US National Mobile carriers

[James Downs]

 On Apr 13, 2015, at 14:20, Ca By cb.li...@gmail.com wrote:

 Dear Amazon, Twitter, Ebay, and Reddit -- please consider this your
 personal invitation to introduce IPv6 to your service.

Skype doesn’t appear to have any IPv6 infrastructure.

-j

Re: Verizon Policy Statement on Net Neutrality

[James Downs]

 On Feb 27, 2015, at 08:11, Stephen Satchell l...@satchell.net wrote:
 
 transcription on an old Underwood Portable that had seen much, much
 better days.

You’d think they could afford a new typewriter or two with all of the Universal 
Service fees they’ve been collecting and not providing.

Re: How to catch a cracker in the US?

[James Downs]

On Mar 13, 2014, at 12:24 PM, William Herrin b...@herrin.us wrote:

 I'm afraid my google-fu doesn't reach back to the 1960's. You don't
 happen to have a handy reference do you?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_%28term%29

Re: [tor-talk] William was raided for running a Tor exit node. Please help if you can.

[James Downs]

On Nov 30, 2012, at 7:20 PM, William Allen Simpson wrote:

 As well you could be, because you appear to have the same name as a
 registered sex offender:

Hey, that's a fun game: 
http://www.sexoffenderin.com/reg77161/william_a_simpsonmugshot.htm

Re: FYI Netflix is down

[James Downs]

On Jul 6, 2012, at 1:50 PM, Dan Golding wrote:

 This happens all the time. Not saying Netflix is doing this, but lots of 
 other folks are. It’s a trap that’s easy to fall into. Especially with 

Netflix did the reverse. The moved *to* Amazon, so they could do noops.

Re: FYI Netflix is down

[James Downs]

On Jul 3, 2012, at 6:11 AM, Dan Golding wrote:

 Also, I don't think there is an acceptable level of downtime for water.
 Neither do water utilities. 

I remember a certain conversation I had with a web-developer. We were talking 
about zero downtime releases. He thought it was acceptable if the website 
went down for 15 minutes, because people will just come back. Naturally, he 
was not as forgiving about the idea that his bank might think the same way, or 
that I might provide DB or server uptimes with that kind of reliability.

Downtime will kill some companies, and not others. Twitter certainly survived 
their fail-whale period. But then, no one pays for twitter.

-j

Re: FYI Netflix is down

[James Downs]

On Jul 2, 2012, at 9:23 AM, david raistrick wrote:

 When the hardware is outsourced how would you propose testing the 
 non-software components?  They do simulate availability zone issues (and AZ 
 is as close as you get to controlling which internal power/network/etc grid 
 you're attached to).

We all know what netflix *says* they do, but they *did* have an outage.

-j

Re: FYI Netflix is down

[James Downs]

On Jul 2, 2012, at 1:20 PM, david raistrick wrote:

 Amazon resources are controlled (from a consumer viewpoint) by API - that API 
 is also used by amazon's internal toolkits that support ELB (and RDS..).   
 Those (http accessed) API interfaces were unavailable for a good portion of 
 the outages.

Right, and other toolkits like boto. Each AZ has a different endpoint (url), 
and as I have no resources running in East, I saw no problems with the API 
endpoints I use. So, as you note, US-EAST Region was not controllable.

 I know nothing of the netflix side of it - but that's what -we- saw. (and 
 that caused all us-east RDS instances in every AZ to appear 


And, if you lose US-EAST, you need to run *somewhere*. Netflix did not cutover 
www.netflix.com to another Region. Why not is another question.

-j

Re: FYI Netflix is down

[James Downs]

On Jul 2, 2012, at 7:19 PM, Rodrick Brown wrote:

 People are acting as if Netflix is part of some critical service they stream 
 movies for Christ sake.  Some acceptable level of loss is fine for 99.99% of 
 Netflix's user base just like cable, electricity and running water I suffer a 
 few hours of losses each year from those services it suck yes, is it the end 
 of the world no.. 

You missed the point.

Re: Whois data compromised?

[James Downs]

On Jun 26, 2012, at 2:44 PM, Eric Rosenberry wrote:

 Not sure where this data got injected into the system (or who knows,
 perhaps it's a DNS injection attack or something), but this certainly is

It's an old trick, been around forever. You just register some random A record 
with a registrar.
Same thing happens for google.com, microsoft.com, probably every big company.

Cheers,
-j

Re: airgap / negligent homicide charge

[James Downs]

On Nov 14, 2011, at 5:15 PM, Steven Bellovin wrote:

 And here's a quote from a legal textbook:

   in this area of the law to those of the public.  In other
   words, society may require of a person not to be awkward

If only that were more generally true.

-j

Re: Mastercard problems

[James Downs]

On Dec 8, 2010, at 12:30 PM, andrew.wallace wrote:

I would say the attack falls under the jurisdiction of the US secret  
service since this is an attack on the financial system.


Today the agency's primary investigative mission is to safeguard  
the payment and financial systems of the United States. ---  
secretservice.gov


Yikes.. you consider a private company's business to be the financial  
and payment system of the United States?


-j

Re: wikileaks unreachable

[James Downs]

On Nov 28, 2010, at 1:34 PM, Randy Bush wrote:


anyone know why https://www.wikileaks.org/ is not reachable?  nations
state level censors trying to close the barn door after the horse has


Reported they were under attack: http://bgg.lv/h2pmsd

Re: non operational question related to IP

[James Downs]

On Nov 22, 2010, at 11:52 AM, Greg Whynott wrote:

anyone happen to know how the OS's are interpreting the 010?
doesn't appear work out in base[2-10]  
(1010,101,22,20,14,13,12,11,10,A)


Looks base 8 to me.

-j

Re: RIP Justification

[James Downs]

On Sep 29, 2010, at 1:47 PM, Ricky Beam wrote:

The 1% where it was a necessary evil... dialup networking where the  
only routing protocol supported was RIP (v2) [netblazers] -- static  
IP clients had to be able to land anywhere -- but RIP only lived on  
the local segment, OSPF took over network-wide. (Later MaxTNT's were  
setup with OSPF


I remember RIP across chassis for the TotalControl bonded dialup  
stuff, and as you mention, static IPs, but I haven't seen it in  
serious use for a long time.


Cheers,
-j

Re: What must one do to avoid Gmail's overachieving spam filtering?

[James Downs]

On Sep 29, 2010, at 2:31 PM, Daniel Seagraves wrote:


On Sep 29, 2010, at 4:08 PM, Ryan Hayes wrote:


Can you please not use the word retarded in a pejorative sense?


The word please is probably not required, since using that word in  
this manner is prosecutable hate speech in some jurisdictions.


Really? Where? Seems to me equating retarded used as an adjective to  
say, speech of the KKK seems... lame.


Also, retarded was applied to software, which to date, has not been  
entered as a protected group.


-j

Re: NANOG Digest, Vol 30, Issue 50

[James Downs]

On Jul 19, 2010, at 4:08 PM, Nathan Eisenberg wrote:


The single host/box had bomb making info and hit lists.  Yeah, I'd
shut it down too if it was on my network.

Joe Hamelin, W7COM, Tulalip, WA, 360-474-7474


As would any reasonable operator.


Or maybe it would have been better to not destroy a known source, and  
work with the FBI to maximize its value.


Cutting it off like that was short-sighted and stupid.

-j

Re: Solar Flux

[James Downs]

On Apr 12, 2010, at 5:37 AM, todd glassey wrote:

Barbie is geek girl or Engineer Barbie the idea that being a  
geek is
offensive may have finally been put to death as it should have 20  
years ago.


Of course, Joel used the word nerd, so..

So, does anyone actually talk about networks on nanog anymore?

-j

Re: FCC dealt major blow in net neutrality ruling favoring, Comcast

[James Downs]

On Apr 12, 2010, at 1:05 PM, Richard Bennett wrote:


 You're speculating that ITIF gets funding from Comcast, and therefore


If only the ITIF released information about their funding sources.

So, does Comcast contribute funds or otherwise sponsor ITIF?
Does Google, Intel, or Microsoft?

Cheers,
-j

Re: Raised floor, Solid floor... or carpet?

[James Downs]

On Apr 1, 2010, at 9:46 AM, Brandon Kim wrote:


Wouldn't a carpet be bad for possible fires/flames or sparks?


Looks like they got 2, now...

-j

Re: NEED ANY LINK OR SAMPLE TEMPLATE FOR ROUTINE NETWORK (ISP) MAINTENANCE PLAN

[James Downs]

On Mar 16, 2010, at 4:55 PM, valdis.kletni...@vt.edu wrote:

Weekly? Is that your secret?  Most of us just do a massive clean-up  
once
a year - the next one is just 15 days away.  Maybe that's the  
problem - go


I still have a box of the plastic covers to put on the ends of the  
cables when the internet lines are cleaned.  Our series of tubes are  
never clogged, but sometimes some dust gets blown out.

Re: Mitigating human error in the SP

[James Downs]

On Feb 2, 2010, at 9:33 AM, Jared Mauch wrote:


We have solved 98% of this with standard configurations and templates.

To deviate from this requires management approval/exception approval  
after an evaluation of the business risks.


I would also point Chad to this book: http://bit.ly/cShEIo (Amazon  
Link to Visual Ops).


It's very useful to have your management read it.  You may or may not  
be able to or want to use a full ITIL process, but understanding how  
these policies and procedures can/should work, and using the ones that  
apply makes sense.


Change control, tracking, and configuration management are going to be  
key to avoiding mistakes, and being able to rapidly repair when one is  
made.


Unfortunately, most management that demands No Tolerance, Zero Error  
from operations won't read the book.


Good luck.. I'd bet most of the people on this list have been there  
one time or another.


Cheers,
-j

Re: Rackspace outage

[James Downs]

On Dec 18, 2009, at 1:58 PM, Justin T. Sharp wrote:

Rackspace seems to have a severe routing loop, which appears to have  
taken a lot of sites down. Does anyone have any information on this?



http://status.mosso.com/2009/12/cloud-sites-dfw-investigating-current-issue.html

Re: FCCs RFC for the Definition of Broadband

[James Downs]

On Aug 28, 2009, at 7:55 PM, Frank Bulk wrote:

I'm not following you here -- which party has the right of first  
refusal?


The incumbent companies (generally, a LEC or cable company) are able  
to refuse projects and also effectively prevent buildouts and upgrades  
from being done by a 3rd party.  However, I have seen reports that in  
a few areas, municipalities are starting to win lawsuits against them  
(in apparently the long appeals process).


urban area receives no USF, and is not able to financially justify  
it even

with a dense customer base.


That might apply to fiber, but even speed upgrades (Newer DSL  
services) are apparently subject to the same refusal process, but the  
rules are different across the country, too.


-j

Re: Issues with Gmail

[James Downs]

On Sep 1, 2009, at 1:11 PM, Dominic J. Eidson wrote:

It appears to be much more a problem with gmail (the MUA)  than  
gmail (the MDA).


Gmail/imap appears to be working fine, at least from AUS.


Same thing here in the US.  Pop/Imap access remains solid.  I never  
use the web interface.


-j

Re: FCCs RFC for the Definition of Broadband

[James Downs]

On Aug 26, 2009, at 5:00 PM, Roy wrote:

I think it has become obvious that the correct definition of  
broadband depends on the users location.  A house in the boonies is  
not going to get fiber,  Perhaps the minimum acceptable bandwidth  
should vary by area.  A definition of area could be some sort of  
user density


Except this is exactly what happened.  The players with vested  
interests were allowed a sort of first refusal on projects.  In  
areas where they had lots of customers, they passed on the projects.   
So, we find that in urban areas, you can't get fiber in the home, but  
there are countless rural farms and homes that have fiber just lying  
around.  I have an acquaintance 60 miles from the closest commercial  
airport in TN, telling me about the fiber internet he has.


-j