Re: Wanted: volunteers with bandwidth/storage to help save climate data

[Larry Sheldon]

I guess at long last it is time for Larry to stop thinking there was a 
common interest here.


NANOG has gone completely into the weeds (my email client treats it as 
political spam).


Sad--once upon a time it was a home for science in an insane academic world.

--
"Everybody is a genius.  But if you judge a fish by
its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole
life believing that it is stupid."

--Albert Einstein

From Larry's Cox account.

Re: OT: "Read Receipts"

[Larry Sheldon]

I avoided the other off charter bait, but this is a red dot to me.

On 11/6/2016 19:59, Patrick wrote:

Over at Language Hat, they are trying to establish the common
pronunciation of "read receipts" [1]

To me, they've always just been "DSNs" or "MDNs", however, according to
rfc2298, their history goes back further.

Of those who lived that history, and actually heard or said "read
receipts", did you pronounce "read" as "reed" or as "red"?


I always pronounce them "More danged spam leaking thru the filters" but 
when I test-read (red) the question, R E A D came out "read (reed)".


The burning questions we have to deal with these days,
--
"Everybody is a genius.  But if you judge a fish by
its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole
life believing that it is stupid."

--Albert Einstein

From Larry's Cox account.

Re: Help interpret a strange traceroute?

[Larry Sheldon]

On 10/31/2016 14:42, William Herrin wrote:

On Mon, Oct 31, 2016 at 3:33 PM, Randy  wrote:

Any idea how a traceroute (into my network) could end up this fubar'd?
Discovered this wierd routing while investigating horrendously slow speeds
(albeit no packet loss) to a particular ISP abroad.


Hi Randy,

This is per-packet load balancing. In the forward path the alternates
are different lengths but the traceroute stops as soon as at least one
of the paths reaches the destination.

The return path is also engaged in per-packet load balancing but the
paths are all the same length.


Seems like a lot of bandwidth trying to save bandwidth.  Or does that 
only happen to ICMP?


--
"Everybody is a genius.  But if you judge a fish by
its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole
life believing that it is stupid."

--Albert Einstein

From Larry's Cox account.

Re: CenturyLink in Advanced Talks to Merge With Level 3 Communications - Interweb is doomed

[Larry Sheldon]

On 10/27/2016 12:36, Nevin Gonsalves via NANOG wrote:

:-)
http://www.wsj.com/articles/centurylink-in-advanced-talks-to-merge-with-level-3-communications-1477589011


OH BOY!  Omaha Taxpayers get to replace all the BGSs for their party 
venue boondoggle.  Again.



https://www.google.com/maps/place/CenturyLink+Center+Omaha/@41.2623782,-95.9281322,19z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0xe896a8b5037ce4d0!8m2!3d41.2624226!4d-95.9282445

--
"Everybody is a genius.  But if you judge a fish by
its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole
life believing that it is stupid."

--Albert Einstein

From Larry's Cox account.

Re: Death of the Internet, Film at 11

[Larry Sheldon]

On 10/25/2016 08:26, Rich Kulawiec wrote:

On Fri, Oct 21, 2016 at 10:53:42PM -0700, Ronald F. Guilmette wrote:

Recent events, like the Krebs DDoS and the even bigger OVH DDoS, and
today's events make it perfectly clear to even the most blithering of
blithering idiots that network operators, en mass, have to start scanning
their own networks for insecurities.


And start monitoring their own networks for *outbound* attacks.  Too many
people focus exclusively on inbound attacks, never realizing that every
attack inbound to them is outbound from somewhere else.


What is it? 20 years? since the first time I was banned from NANOG for 
saying that the world would be a nicer place if EVERY true router 
refused to forward a packet whose SOURCE could not be reached from the 
port question.  (May not be stated clearly, but idea seems simple 
enough:  If the proposed ICMP message would not be routed to the port 
the packet came from, the best plan is probably to log the event and 
drop the ICMP and the rogue packet on the floor.)


--
"Everybody is a genius.  But if you judge a fish by
its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole
life believing that it is stupid."

--Albert Einstein

From Larry's Cox account.

Re: Death of the Internet, Film at 11

[Larry Sheldon]

On 10/23/2016 21:02, David Conrad wrote:


Shut down subnets of your own customers?


That was the problem I broke my pick on 20 years or more ago.

ISPs absolute refusal to put in filters at no-revenue-expense since it 
would cost money to install and maintain, and worst of all MIGHT 
conceivably block revenue-producing-abuse traffic.


No matter that paying customers were not able to use the service they 
were paying for.


--
"Everybody is a genius.  But if you judge a fish by
its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole
life believing that it is stupid."

--Albert Einstein

From Larry's Cox account.

Re: A perl script to convert Cisco IOS/Nexus/ASA configurations to HTML for easier comprehension

[Larry Sheldon]

On 10/6/2016 15:26, Jesse McGraw wrote:

(This is me scratching an itch of my own and hoping that sharing it
might be useful to others on this list.  Apologies if it isn't)

  When I'm trying to comprehend a new or complicated Cisco router,
switch or firewall configuration an old pet-peeve of mine is how
needlessly difficult it is to follow deeply nested logic in route-maps,
ACLs, QoS policy-maps etc etc


A dim, weak voice from the past.  Has advantages of the plan proposed here.


To make this a bit simpler I’ve been working on a perl script to convert
these text-based configuration files into HTML with links between the
different elements (e.g. To an access-list from the interface where it’s
applied, from policy-maps to class-maps etc), hopefully making it easier
to to follow the chain of logic via clicking links and using the forward
and back buttons in your browser to go back and forth between command
and referenced list.


We used to (using a HB lead in a draftsman' lead holder and a stack for 
Forms SN 457* (Blank Spread Sheet, 11 x 17) sorted all of the requests, 
demands and other requirements into logical packages.


Then, using the blank back side of the spread sheet, we drew "flow 
diagrams depicting how we would code the requirements.  If a section got 
a little complicated and tedious, we'd put a symbol on the diagram, a 
title that made sense and a page number.


On a new sheet, we wrote that title and that page number and drew the 
flow diagram for that messy bit of business.


Then we would "desk check" the flow diagrams and in the process, note on 
the requirements sheet (s) the diagram number (and entry point if there 
was more than one) where the requirement was satisfied.


Then we would start with a new sheet working from the flow diagrams, 
write the code for the machine (noting on the flow diagram the page and 
line number in the code where the operation on the flow diagram occurred.


There are several advantages to this approach--hard to leave important 
stuff out, hard to include code that is never exercised, hard to make 
changes to the code because you don't know how to make HTML depict it 
correctly.


No need to lecture me on the folly of the old ways--it is why I got 
fired for being too old.


--
"Everybody is a genius.  But if you judge a fish by
its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole
life believing that it is stupid."

--Albert Einstein

From Larry's Cox account.

Re: Legislative proposal sent to my Congressman

[Larry Sheldon]

On 10/3/2016 13:58, Stephen Satchell wrote:

In thinking over the last DDos involving IoT devices, I think we don't
have a good technical solution to the problem.  Cutting off people with
defective devices they they don't understand, and have little control
over, is an action that makes sense, but hurts the innocent.  "Hey,
Grandma, did you know your TV set is hurting the Internet?"

It's the people who foist bad stuff on the people who need to take the
responsibility.  Indeed, with enough moxie, we could avoid the net
saturation problem in the first place.

My proposal, as I sent it to my US House Representative:



[much snipping]



Why not nip the IoT problem in the bud?


Why not, indeed?  (Full disclosure:  I am not and have not for some 
years been active in management of any networks, and I AM woefully 
behind the state of the arts.)


Having said that, it occurs to me that Mr. Satchell's proposal (and most 
of the others I have read about here and elsewhere lately) are doomed to 
the same failure as Chicago's plan for reducing illegal deaths by 
firearm, and for much the same reason (discussion of which here I will 
spare you.


Back in the day, I was fighting a problem that I summarized (then and 
now) as trying to stop the use and abuse of the University's (that 
employed me) 56kb Frame Relay link to the Internet.  Then as now I 
defined "abuse" as the use of our facilities for purposes that no 
stretch of imagination or definition could be said to be to the 
University's benefit.


Through some experimentation I concluded that there were several clearly 
identifiable sources of abuse.  I disremember the ordering by severity 
but they included:


Outright attacks on the University and others.
Myriad "scans" for a variety of reasons.

The first of these two I remember as being the worst (in terms of 
item-count AND in terms of packet-size.  I also recall it being the 
easiest to fix, if anybody want to fix it.  (The dominant reasons  given 
where that it would cost money without a revenue stream, and it would 
reduce traffic that WAS in the revenue stream.  The fix I proposed: 
Require (by law) that every service provider and every origination 
customer of a service provider would under penalty of law, block the 
transmission of a packet whose source address could not be reached via 
the link upon which it was found.


The Myriad scans problem was a little harder (for among other 
reasons--the argument that they were good for us, even though they 
accounted for something like 60% of the traffic on that link).  The 
solution I tried but ran out of dollars on was to detect somebody 
scanning and route them to the Loopback interface of the boundary router.

--
"Everybody is a genius.  But if you judge a fish by
its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole
life believing that it is stupid."

--Albert Einstein

From Larry's Cox account.

Re: PlayStationNetwork blocking of CGNAT public addresses

[Larry Sheldon]

On 9/18/2016 16:26, Larry Sheldon wrote:



On 9/18/2016 08:19, Mike Hammett wrote:

People love to hate incumbent telcos because of their arrogance (and
frankly it's deserved), but people forget that big content can be
just as arrogant and just as deserving of hatred.


I never did see the benefit or the approach.  To anybody.


> I never did see the benefit oF the approach.  To anybody.

--
"Everybody is a genius.  But if you judge a fish by
its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole
life believing that it is stupid."

--Albert Einstein

From Larry's Cox account.

Re: PlayStationNetwork blocking of CGNAT public addresses

[Larry Sheldon]

On 9/18/2016 08:19, Mike Hammett wrote:

People love to hate incumbent telcos because of their arrogance (and
frankly it's deserved), but people forget that big content can be
just as arrogant and just as deserving of hatred.


I never did see the benefit or the approach.  To anybody.


--
"Everybody is a genius.  But if you judge a fish by
its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole
life believing that it is stupid."

--Albert Einstein

From Larry's Cox account.

Re: One more thing to watch out for at data centers - fire drills

[Larry Sheldon]

On 9/17/2016 07:39, Suresh Ramasubramanian wrote:

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/a-loud-sound-just-shut-down-a-banks-data-center-for-10-hours?utm_source=bbcfb

 Releasing inert gas from fire suppression units that were over
pressurized resulted in an extremely loud noise


My experience is only with in-specification systems (and only in tape 
libraries) but those tests were pretty loud.


– causing cabinets
> full of hard drives to vibrate – which got transmitted to the read –
> write heads of the drives.

My experiences were back in the days of washing-machine class disc 
drives and they were a 4-hour fire-wall away, but I don't remember them 
being impacted. (I can't believe that I was allowed to conduct a test 
with them running, but I don't remember shutting them down.)


I wonder if orientation mattered--mine were all platters parallel to the 
floor, I wonder if the damaged ones were parallel to the wave front.



full of hard drives to vibrate – which got transmitted to the read –
write heads of the drives.

Amazing sort of outage + data loss, and this time the physical
security plant chief gets to write up the RCA.


--
"Everybody is a genius.  But if you judge a fish by
its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole
life believing that it is stupid."

--Albert Einstein

From Larry's Cox account.

Re: Don't press the big red buttom on the wall!

[Larry Sheldon]

On 8/30/2016 15:46, b...@theworld.com wrote:


About the worst that ever happened to me was a security guy's
walkie-talkie setting off an instant Halon drop. Cost about $10,000 to
refill and was fairly exciting for those present. That also cut the
machine room's power.

At least it didn't set off the sprinkler system.

We sat down with the Halon system vendor to find out why that happened
after proving, on a by-passed system, that yes indeed one of these
common walkie-talkies sets the thing off.

File under: More Things To Worry About!


We used to have to drive across a quarry to get to a repeater station 
(or to one of the cables, which was "aerial" across the quarry), and 
lots of folks scoffed at the "turn off two-way radios" signs as we 
approached the area.


I did not scoff.

--
"Everybody is a genius.  But if you judge a fish by
its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole
life believing that it is stupid."

--Albert Einstein

From Larry's Cox account.

Re: Don't press the big red buttom on the wall!

[Larry Sheldon]

On 8/30/2016 09:40, Keith Stokes wrote:

At one point in one data center I dealt with a disgruntled employee
hit the UPS disconnect button on the way out.

Same story, procedures modified, cover put over switch with a hammer
to break the glass, lessons learned, accounts credited.


A very long time ago ("network" involved a fleet of green "wide-band" 
trucks, hauling tapes to contractors and other offices) the system 
involved 9 computer centers around the state, built over a period  of 
years, so they had a lot of similarities but some key differences.


Many of them had wide, pneumatic sliding doors between the computer room 
and the unit-record rooms.  Some of the doors had floor mats that would 
pop the doors open when stepped on (or a cart full of card trays was 
rolled onto).


Many of them (for what ever reason--I think I know but it isn't relevant 
here) had large black buttons on each side of the doors, on each side of 
the wall.


It happened that one had the mats at the sliding doors. but there was an 
ordinary door near the consoles that had a large black button next to it.


It was in this office that a conversion team was running some stuff that 
ran for hours (in violation of the rule that if a job ran more than 
thirty minutes it Must Include checkpoint-restart points every 20 
minutes) was nearly finished after running all day and all night (as I 
recall it).


One of the team left the computer room via the ordinary door, pushing 
the big black button.


Which was (you saw this coming a long time ago, right?) the Emergency 
Power Off button.


I do not recall any lessons being learned.  At all.  The group leader 
(that refused to include checkpoint-restart) years later was conducting 
a conversion run in a different system but that had many of the same 
standards ran a job that ran many many hours in a computer center known 
for flaky power.  Without Checkpoint-Restart.  We took a power hit when 
the run had something like 24 records left to process.



--
"Everybody is a genius.  But if you judge a fish by
its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole
life believing that it is stupid."

--Albert Einstein

From Larry's Cox account.

Re: Handling of Abuse Complaints

[Larry Sheldon]

On 8/29/2016 11:47, Steve Atkins wrote:


Unless your abuse / security desk is staffed by lawyers it's probably
better to avoid words like "criminal" and "unlawfully" altogether and
stick to "in violation of our ToS".


Or "in violation of your contract (which includes, by reference, our 
TOS) with us."


--
"Everybody is a genius.  But if you judge a fish by
its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole
life believing that it is stupid."

--Albert Einstein

From Larry's Cox account.

Re: Zayo Extortion

[Larry Sheldon]

On 8/16/2016 21:13, William Herrin wrote:

On Tue, Aug 16, 2016 at 7:11 PM, Jonathan Hall  wrote:

if I’m not mistaken (don’t worry, I’m not) - this doesn’t count
 as ‘slander’ in any way, shape or form.


Jonathan,

Technically you're right, but not for the reason you think. Slander is
verbal defamation. Libel is written defamation. The original poster
has potentially exposed himself to a libel suit.


But what are the BGP implications?

--
"Everybody is a genius.  But if you judge a fish by
its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole
life believing that it is stupid."

--Albert Einstein

From Larry's Cox account.

Re: Zayo Extortion

[Larry Sheldon]

On 8/15/2016 07:29, Mike Hammett wrote:

Try more facts and less emotion.


I remember a day when I was banned from NANOG of less emotion and lots 
more factual content.



- Original Message -

From: "HonorFirst Name Ethics via NANOG"


Red-flag line.

[much snippage has occurred]


A Zayo victim and a NANOG Member


[a little more would have been right]

--
"Everybody is a genius.  But if you judge a fish by
its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole
life believing that it is stupid."

--Albert Einstein

From Larry's Cox account.

Re: Google.com redirecting to Google.co.in

[Larry Sheldon]

On 7/29/2016 10:02, Vikash Sorout via NANOG wrote:

 blockquote, div.yahoo_quoted { margin-left: 0 !important; border-left:1px 
#715FFA solid !important; padding-left:1ex !important; background-color:white 
!important; }  Hi All,
When I am trying to hit Google.com it's redirecting me to Google.co.in. I am 
using VPN network globally over MPLS networks
So for all locations internet is going via Level 3 in North America .
You can go here for my IP details.


I am seeking for support please help me out.

Side note : Google geo-coding is looking good.

Sent from Yahoo Mail for iPhone


What could be worse in a ASCII text-only environment than seriously 
broken HTML that

reads like spam if you take the time to decode it?


--
"Everybody is a genius.  But if you judge a fish by
its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole
life believing that it is stupid."

--Albert Einstein

From Larry's Cox account.

Re: cloudflare hosting a ddos service?

[Larry Sheldon]

On 7/26/2016 21:19, jim deleskie wrote:

Back in the day didn't we refer to such hosting as bulletproof hosting?


Not HERE!

NANA-E, sure.



--
"Everybody is a genius.  But if you judge a fish by
its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole
life believing that it is stupid."

--Albert Einstein

From Larry's Cox account.

Re: NAT firewall for IPv6?

[Larry Sheldon]

On 7/5/2016 18:46, Matt Palmer wrote:

On Fri, Jul 01, 2016 at 09:28:54PM -0500, Edgar Carver wrote:

Hello NANOG community. I was directed here by our network administrator
since she is on vacation. Luckily, I minored in Computer Science so I have
some familiarity.


Well played, Tay.  Well played.


I was suspicious at the "minored" announcement, but it looked so much 
like traffic here.


I guess the reality is that for legitimate traffic, this list is used 
only as a "calling frequency" with the "working frequency" being 
somewhere secret.


Sad.



For everyone else:

https://twitter.com/SwiftOnSecurity/status/749062835687174144


--
"Everybody is a genius.  But if you judge a fish by
its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole
life believing that it is stupid."

--Albert Einstein

From Larry's Cox account.

Re: NAT firewall for IPv6?

[Larry Sheldon]

My how the world has changed!

On 7/1/2016 21:28, Edgar Carver wrote:

Hello NANOG community. I was directed here by our network administrator
since she is on vacation.


I am Old School, I guess.  In my day Step One would be "Fire the 
administrator."  The job is by nature a 24 X 7 X 52 job and "On Call" 
the rest of the time.  "Vacation" is never a reason to leave your 
assignment insecure.


"NAT-based firewall"?  Really?

How long has the consultant been out of business?

Luckily, I minored in Computer Science so I have

some familiarity.


I have no idea how I fat-fingered a "send" at this point/

I started to write that you have an emergency on your hands and you need 
to focus your attention of finding a person or firm that can take charge 
and fix problems you don't even know about yet.


A "Dear Abby" approach is going do way more harm than good.

--
"Everybody is a genius.  But if you judge a fish by
its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole
life believing that it is stupid."

--Albert Einstein

 From Larry's Cox account.

Re: NAT firewall for IPv6?

[Larry Sheldon]

My how the world has changed!

On 7/1/2016 21:28, Edgar Carver wrote:

Hello NANOG community. I was directed here by our network administrator
since she is on vacation.


I am Old School, I guess.  In my day Step One would be "Fire the 
administrator."  The job is by nature a 24 X 7 X 52 job and "On Call" 
the rest of the time.  "Vacation" is never a reason to leave your 
assignment insecure.


"NAT-based firewall"?  Really?

How long has the consultant been out of business?

Luckily, I minored in Computer Science so I have

some familiarity.

We have a small satellite campus of around 170 devices that share one
external IPv4 and IPv6 address via NAT for internet traffic. Internal
traffic is over an MPLS.

We're having problems where viruses are getting through Firefox, and we
think it's because our Palo Alto firewall is set to bypass filtering for
IPv6. Unfortunately, the network admin couldn't give me the password since
a local consultant set it up, and it seems they went out of business. I
need to think outside the box.

Is there some kind of NAT-based IPv6 firewall I can setup on the router
that can help block viruses? I figure that's the right place to start since
all the traffic gets funneled there. We have a Cisco Catalyst as a
router. Or, ideally, is there an easy way to turn off IPv6 completely? I
really don't see a need for it, any legitimate service should have an IPv4
address.

I'd really appreciate your advice. I plan to drive out there tomorrow,
where I can get the exact model numbers and stuff.

Regards,
Dr. Edgar Carver



--
"Everybody is a genius.  But if you judge a fish by
its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole
life believing that it is stupid."

--Albert Einstein

From Larry's Cox account.

Re: Do people even read these? Re: BGP Update Report

[Larry Sheldon]

You did.

--
"Everybody is a genius.  But if you judge a fish by
its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole
life believing that it is stupid."

--Albert Einstein

From Larry's Cox account.

Re: Netflix VPN detection - actual engineer needed

[Larry Sheldon]

On 6/4/2016 13:38, Owen DeLong wrote:

If you’re wife is really worried about $100/year, give up your first
2 weeks of Starbucks each year in trade.


My wife does very well in managing our sparse resources (in spite of the 
efforts of the government and the Jesuits) and (I suspect) would not 
patronize a Starbucks on an errand for a dying parishioner.


There are two (at least) things I do not understand about this business 
(probably why I failed at it).  Why do people buy "services" from people 
who charge extra to annoy their customers, and why do providers work so 
hard to be annoying when providing better service would actually be 
cheaper and less work?


--
"Everybody is a genius.  But if you judge a fish by
its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole
life believing that it is stupid."

--Albert Einstein

From Larry's Cox account.

Re: rfc 1812 third party address on traceroute

[Larry Sheldon]

I am completely innocent of rfc1812, and have been out of the game for a 
long time, but I am pretty sure I was taught (and in turn taught) that a 
router would reply using the address of the interface that originated 
the reply unless that interface was unnumbered, in which case it would 
reply from the loop-back address.


Never too old to learn something.


--
"Everybody is a genius.  But if you judge a fish by
its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole
life believing that it is stupid."

--Albert Einstein

From Larry's Cox account.

Re: phone fun, was GeoIP database issues and the real world consequences

[Larry Sheldon]

On 4/20/2016 10:15, Owen DeLong wrote:



On Apr 20, 2016, at 7:59 AM, Jean-Francois Mezei  
wrote:

On 2016-04-20 10:52, Owen DeLong wrote:


For the most part, “long distance” calls within the US are a thing of the
past and at least one mobile carrier now treats US/CA/MX as a single
local calling area



Is this a case of telcos having switched to IP trunks and can reach
other carriers for "free"

Or are wholesale long distance still billed between carriers but at
prices so low that they can afford to offer "free" long distance at
retail level ?


I think it boiled down to a recognition that the costs of billing were 
beginning to account for something like $0.99 of every $1 billed.


I wonder if the costs of avoiding-preventing-investigating toll fraud 
final grow to consume the profit in the product.


I know that long ago there were things that I thought were insanely 
silly.  A few examples:


As an ordinary citizen I was amused and annoyed, in the case where a 
toll charge had been contested (and perforce refunded) there would often 
be several non-revenue calls to the protesting number asking whoever 
answered if they knew anybody in the called city, or if they knew who 
the called number belonged to.   (Proper answer in any case:  Who or 
what I know is none of your business.)  Often there would calls to the 
called number (super irritating because the error was in the 
recording--later learned to be poor handwriting) asking the reciprocal 
questions except that often they had no idea that a call had been made.


I  was a Toll Transmissionman for a number or years back in the last 
iceage and one of the onerous tasks the supervisor had was "verifying 
the phone bill" which might be a stack as much as six inches tall.  The 
evening shift supervisor (or one of them in a large office, like Los 
Angeles 1 Telegraph, where I worked for a while) would go through the 
bill, line by line, page by page, looking at the called number an d if 
he recognized it and placing a check mark next to it,  If he did not 
recognize it, he would search the many lists in the office to see it was 
shown, and adding a check mark if a list showed it for a likely sounding 
legal call.  If that didn't work he would probably have to call the 
number to see who answered (adding a wasted revenue-call path to the 
wreckage).  Most often it would turn out to be the home telephone number 
of a repair supervisor in West Sweatsock, Montana, who had been called 
because a somebody who protested the policy that the repairman going 
fishing meant some problem would not be addressed for several days.  So 
he put a check mark next to the number and moved on.


Which meant the number would show up on the next month's bill.  And it 
would again not be recognized from memory.  And so forth and so on. 
Until eventually, after several months, the number would be recognized, 
check-marked without drama, and disappear forever from the bill.


Lastly, in later years I was assigned to the the Revenue Accounting 
organization (to write programs for printing telephone books) and came 
to realize that there were a LOT of people in RA working with a LOT of 
people in the Chief Special Agents organization using a LOT of computer 
time to analyze Toll records for fraud patterns.


Oops, not quite lastly  Looking back at my Toll Plant days in the 
heyday of Captain Crunch--there were a lot engineering hours redesigning 
Toll equipment, and plant hours modifying or replacing equipment do 
defeat the engineering efforts of the Blue Box Boys.


--
"Everybody is a genius.  But if you judge a fish by
its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole
life believing that it is stupid."

--Albert Einstein

Re: phone fun, was GeoIP database issues and the real world consequences

[Larry Sheldon]

On 4/14/2016 15:10, Larry Sheldon wrote:


We wrote off a lot of revenue on calls that involved a company (if I
remembered the name I still would not repeat it--ditto its location)
which turn out to be pretty much one man who like to sell and install
mobile radio telephone stations.  And, it turns out, not even slightly
interested in separations, bill and collecting, an other stuff that


I think I meant "settlements", not "separations".  But I'm not sure.


dominates an Operating Company's attentions.


--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)

Re: phone fun, was GeoIP database issues and the real world consequences

[Larry Sheldon]

On 4/14/2016 12:09, Owen DeLong wrote:



On Apr 14, 2016, at 05:46 , John Levine  wrote:


If they're land lines, the NPA/NXX will be local to the CO so you won't
have out-of-area numbers other than a rare corner case of a very
expensive foreign exchange line. If they're VoIP lines, the address is
*supposed* to be so registered, but softphones and even VoIP handsets
tend to move around without the user considering 9-1-1.


VoIP was dragged kicking and screaming into E911, so now they charge
extra and are quite clear about it.  My VoIP provider regularly
reminds me to update my 9-1-1 address, but since I don't have to pay
the 9-1-1 fee if I lie and say I'm outside North America, that's what
I do.  Since I also have a classic CO-powered copper landline (1/4
mile from the CO, no concentrators or repeaters) and a couple of cell
phones, I think we're covered.


With my VOIP provider, I didn’t quite have to lie.

I generally don’t need my VOIP number when I’m in the US (cell is free here),
so I simply told them “I do not intend to use this number or this service
within the US”.

The first time I sent them a marked-up contract, they contacted me with
questions. The following year, the new version of the contract reflected
my changes to their original wording.

Since then, I’ve been pretty much satisfied with my service from callcentric
and the price is right.


Quick question:  What happens (in the purely hypothetical case, I 
sincerely hope) if the building is on fire and it turns out that the 
VOIP-phone is the only one that works?


Do you leave it turned off?


--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)

Re: phone fun, was GeoIP database issues and the real world consequences

[Larry Sheldon]

On 4/14/2016 10:45, Gary Buhrmaster wrote:

On Thu, Apr 14, 2016 at 3:32 PM, Leo Bicknell  wrote:
.

So maybe 10% of all cell phones are primarly used in the "wrong" area?


Obligatory xkcd ref:  https://xkcd.com/1129/


I am reminded of incidents many years ago when I worked in a Revenue 
Accounting Office of a Bell System Operating Company.  One of my duties 
involved dealing with the mostly-manually-processed toll calls 
originating or terminating at a Mobile Telephone System station in our 
area (whatever the word "area" turns out to mean).


We wrote off a lot of revenue on calls that involved a company (if I 
remembered the name I still would not repeat it--ditto its location) 
which turn out to be pretty much one man who like to sell and install 
mobile radio telephone stations.  And, it turns out, not even slightly 
interested in separations, bill an collecting, an other stuff that 
dominates an Operating Company's attentions.




--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)

Re: phone fun, was GeoIP database issues and the real world consequences

[Larry Sheldon]

On 4/14/2016 10:32, Leo Bicknell wrote:

In a message written on Thu, Apr 14, 2016 at 12:29:39AM -, John Levine 
wrote:

The people on nanog are not typical.  I looked around for statistics
and didn't find much, but it looks like only a few percent of numbers
are ported each month, and it's often the same numbers being ported
repeatedly.


It's a big issue for political pollers, and they have some data:

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/01/05/pew-research-center-will-call-75-cellphones-for-surveys-in-2016/

 "roughly half (47%) of U.S. adults whose only phone is a cellphone."

 "in a recent national poll, 8% of people interviewed by cellphone in
  California had a phone number from a state other than California.
  Similarly, of the people called on a cellphone number associated with
  California, 10% were interviewed in a different state."

So maybe 10% of all cell phones are primarly used in the "wrong" area?


OK, let us suppose I want to be a law biding, up right American and use 
only a cellphone for the "right" area.


I drive a big truck OTR.  I usually know what part of which state I am 
in, but I frequently do not know which part of what state I will be in 
in 24 hours.


What should I do?

Suppose I was, instead, an aircrew member and the only truly stable 
datum is "Planet Earth"?



--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)

Re: phone fun, was GeoIP database issues and the real world consequences

[Larry Sheldon]

On 4/13/2016 15:12, Owen DeLong wrote:


I guarantee you that many, if not most at this point, of those
numbers are no longer actually handled by that switch most of the
time.

I suspect that there are more SS7 exceptions than default within that
particular prefix which is why I chose it.


I question whether (on a global scale) the odds are above 50-50 that a 
number (other than a test line) is served by the switch NANPA associates 
with the number.


I am in frequent contact by a person that has a 917 NNX--numbered 
telephone who spends a lot of time with a person that has a 408 
NNX--numbered telephone, and they both live in Metropolitan Boston


The number I offer as my "home" telephone number "belongs" to a CO in a 
town 11 miles south of here and is not switched by the company that 
"owns" it.


Knowing a telephone number or an IP address means that on a good day, 
you know how to make a connection with an instrument associated with it. 
 Which may well be in the possession of Mrs. Calabash.

--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)

Re: phone fun, was GeoIP database issues and the real world consequences

[Larry Sheldon]

On 4/13/2016 14:45, John R. Levine wrote:

NANP geographical numbers can be located to a switch (give
or take number portability within a LATA), but non-geographic numbers
can really go anywhere.  On the third hand, it's still true that the
large majority of them are in the U.S.


Would you agree that 408-921 is a geographic number?


No.  It's a prefix, assigned to the at switch in west San Jose.


I guarantee you that there are phones within that prefix within
US/Calif/LATA-1 and also some well outside of that, probably not even
in the same country.


Who said anything about phones?  Could you describe what "geographic
numbers can be located to a switch" means to you?


Lemmee see, the issue is, whose barn do we burn down, based on the 
telephone number associated with it--the one the with the switch or the 
one with the telephone?


There right answer is predicated on the the facts that the number (IP or 
telephone or serial number plate) is of NO use what ever in locating 
anything, certainly not as a cause for action.  Anybody who acts 
different;y should have painful things done to them.


I don't care what expert tells you different.

A case in point--the other day I had need for the ZIP code for the house 
I lived in at age 10.  So I Binged the address for a ZIP code and got 
one.  Along with a Googlish picture that goes with the address.


When I was 10, the address was for one of four tiny houses on a small 
city lot.  (Which, I discovered in later years was in a barrio, and 
populated by people at of below the poverty line, if anybody had used 
that terminology then.)


The picture was of a KITCHEN! that appeared to be bigger than the house 
I lived in--the Zillow entry for the property now was 3/4 of a million 
dollars.


Knowing the address of a place is not definitive of the place.  Period.

--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)

Re: GeoIP database issues and the real world consequences

[Larry Sheldon]

On 4/12/2016 08:31, Leo Bicknell wrote:

In a message written on Mon, Apr 11, 2016 at 03:10:44PM -0400, Sean Donelan 
wrote:

If GeoIP insists on giving a specific lon/lat, instead of an uncertaintity
how about using locations such as the followign as the "default I don't
know where it is"

United States: 38.8899 N, 77.0091 W (U.S. Capital Building)
Missouri: 38.5792 N, 92.1729 W (Missouri State Capital Building)

After the legislators get tired of the police raiding the capital
buildings, they will probably do something to fix it.


Massachusetts: 42.376702 N, 71.239076 W (MaxMind Corporate HQ)

Maybe after seeing what it's like to be on the receiving end of their
own inaccuracy they will be a bit more motivated to fix it.



BINGO!!!
--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)

Re: GeoIP database issues and the real world consequences

[Larry Sheldon]

On 4/11/2016 11:55, Chris Boyd wrote:


Interesting article.

http://fusion.net/story/287592/internet-mapping-glitch-kansas-farm/

An hour’s drive from Wichita, Kansas, in a little town called Potwin,
there is a 360-acre piece of land with a very big problem.

The plot has been owned by the Vogelman family for more than a hundred
years, though the current owner, Joyce Taylor née Vogelman, 82, now
rents it out. The acreage is quiet and remote: a farm, a pasture, an old
orchard, two barns, some hog shacks and a two-story house. It’s the kind
of place you move to if you want to get away from it all. The nearest
neighbor is a mile away, and the closest big town has just 13,000
people. It is real, rural America; in fact, it’s a two-hour drive from
the exact geographical center of the United States.

But instead of being a place of respite, the people who live on Joyce
Taylor’s land find themselves in a technological horror story.


And not even slightly funny.

What happened to Truth.  If you do not know, say "I don't know."

Or be silent.





For the last decade, Taylor and her renters have been visited by all
kinds of mysterious trouble. They’ve been accused of being identity
thieves, spammers, scammers and fraudsters. They’ve gotten visited by
FBI agents, federal marshals, IRS collectors, ambulances searching for
suicidal veterans, and police officers searching for runaway children.
They’ve found people scrounging around in their barn. The renters have
been doxxed, their names and addresses posted on the internet by
vigilantes. Once, someone left a broken toilet in the driveway as a
strange, indefinite threat.

--Chris





--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)

Re: Oh dear, we've all been made redundant...

[Larry Sheldon]

On 3/25/2016 09:39, Bryan Bradsby wrote:

Uggghhh.  I've always hated this 'reboot, see if it fixes it'
methodology.  If the CPEs can't recover from error conditions
correctly, they shouldn't be used.  I blame Microsoft for making this
concept acceptable.

Chuck


I was getting 20% TCP packet loss between two of my unix boxes on the
TWC route from my house to work, so I called support.

I used lft - like tcptraceroute - both directions, to identify a TWC
backbone router in Dallas as the problem. I then used the TWC looking
glass to show the same result.

I was told i needed to reboot my router to troubleshoot. I offered to
reboot my router, after he rebooted his router in Dallas  ;)


Conversation with one of my daughters earlier about a problem in her 
office today (short summary as I recall it):  Changes made to their VOIP 
system the night before,  stuff broken the next day.


She tried to get "support" to look at the changes made, "support" would 
not do anything until she had rebooted everything including the 
microwave, I guess.


Back in the day--my main trouble shooting strategy was to identify all 
the things that had changed since it last worked the way it was supposed 
to.  The big trouble with that approach is that everybody and their pet 
spider will decide which changes are "important".



--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)

Re: Oh dear, we've all been made redundant...

[Larry Sheldon]

On 3/24/2016 08:08, Casey Russell wrote:

 >>Just goes to show the vast range of technical issues that can be
 >>readily righted with little more than a good thump with a hammer.

We always referred to that as "percussive maintenance"

Casey Russell
Network Engineer
Kansas Research and Education Network

2029 Becker Drive, Suite 282

Lawrence, KS  66047

(785)856-9820  ext 9809
cruss...@kanren.net <mailto:cruss...@kanren.net>

On Mon, Mar 21, 2016 at 3:19 AM, Wayne Bouchard <w...@typo.org
<mailto:w...@typo.org>> wrote:

On Sun, Mar 20, 2016 at 11:00:36PM -0500, Larry Sheldon wrote:
> On 3/19/2016 18:16, Warren Kumari wrote:
> > Found on Staple's website:
> 
>http://www.staples.com/NetReset-Automated-Power-Cycler-for-Modems-and-Routers/product_1985686
> >
> > Fixes all issues, less downtime, less stress...
>
> etc...
> ...
> 
> ...and so forth
> 
> .
> ..and so on.
>
> > Resetting allows equipment to auto-correct issues
>
> Recalls to mind years ago in the Toll testroom where I worked, the
> evenings equipment man (charged with and assigned to the task of
> repairing equipment that had been "patched out" by the day shift) would,
> when he arrived for work each day, retrieve the piece of 2 X 4 from its
> hiding place and whack each bay of relay-rich equipment as he walked in
> the area.
>
> Then, after some coffee and a cigarette, he would go through the
> trouble-ticket collection, retest the item, mark the ticket "NTF" and
> proceed to the next item.

I love that!

Just goes to show the vast range of technical issues that can be
readily righted with little more than a good thump with a hammer.


In a later live, I worked in a computer center housing A computer (1110, 
1100/80, 1100/90).  The UNIVAC CEs had in their kit an tool for locating 
"shock-sensitive" boards--looked like and worked like an "automatic 
centerpunch" with a blunt point.


--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)

Re: Oh dear, we've all been made redundant...

[Larry Sheldon]

On 3/21/2016 12:06, Chuck Church wrote:

Uggghhh.  I've always hated this 'reboot, see if it fixes it'
methodology.  If the CPEs can't recover from error conditions
correctly, they shouldn't be used.  I blame Microsoft for making this
concept acceptable.  LOL.


Any trouble case that does NOT have the word "replaced", "repaired", or 
"patched", followed with a specific, identifiable device name was not 
"closed".  It is still an open, unsolved case.




--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)

Re: Oh dear, we've all been made redundant...

[Larry Sheldon]

On 3/19/2016 18:16, Warren Kumari wrote:

Found on Staple's website:
http://www.staples.com/NetReset-Automated-Power-Cycler-for-Modems-and-Routers/product_1985686

Fixes all issues, less downtime, less stress...


etc...
...

...and so forth

.
..and so on.


Resetting allows equipment to auto-correct issues


Recalls to mind years ago in the Toll testroom where I work, the 
evenings equipment man (charged with and assigned to the task of 
repairing equipment that had been "patched out" by the day shift) would, 
when he arrived for work each day, retrieve the piece of 2 X 4 from its 
hiding place and whack each bay of relay-rich equipment as he walked in 
the area.


Then, after some coffee and a cigarette, he would go through the 
trouble-ticket collection, retest the item, mark the ticket "NTF" and 
proceed to the next item.


--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)

Re: About inetnum "ownership"

[Larry Sheldon]

On 3/2/2016 08:05, Bob Evans wrote:

The numbers (IP addresses) are not the field. The servers are the field.
The numbers are the street addresses of the server. Domain names would be
a nick name for the numbers, like PaddingHouse.com is at 55.51.52.1. The
BGP table is a road map.

That's why it was once called the Super Information Highway, remember?

You can sell street/road maps to the stars, and the stars don't have to
let you in.

Thank You
Bob Evans
CTO





On Wed, 2016-03-02 at 00:44 -0500, William Herrin wrote:

Do I have the legal right to exclude others from announcing my block
of IP addresses to the public Internet routing tables? It's not well
tested in court but the odds are exceptionally strong that I do.

If I own some property - say a field - the location of that field is
with certain rare exceptions public information. I as the owner cannot
enforce a requirement on you to NOT tell people where my field is. I
can't demand that you NOT build roads past it, or that you NOT put up
signs saying how to get to my field, or even that you NOT tell people
who owns the field. I have the right to exclusive use of the property,
but I have no rights to information about the property, nor any
property rights outside the boundary of the property.

Testing in court the idea that you may not advertise my routes would be
a fascinating exercise. If you falsely advertised them it would be a
different matter.

Has this sort of thing been tested in the courts at all? In any
jurisdiction?


Indeed, the whole point of registration is to facilitate
determination
of -who- has the exclusive right over -which- blocks of addresses.

The problem is what rights we are talking about. I would say that
practically speaking the only real right here is the right to configure
an address on an interface. But anyone else can send packets to an
address, or advertise to others the direction of travel towards that
network. Malicious activity excluded of course - DoS attacks and so on,
but I think the issues there are different. Also, contractually
regulated relationships are different - if I connect something up to
ISPX and have a contract with ISPX to NOT advertise the route to me,
then ISPX is constrained.

Regards, K.

--
~~~
Karl Auer (ka...@biplane.com.au)
http://www.biplane.com.au/kauer
http://twitter.com/kauer389

GPG fingerprint: E00D 64ED 9C6A 8605 21E0 0ED0 EE64 2BEE CBCB C38B
Old fingerprint: 3C41 82BE A9E7 99A1 B931 5AE7 7638 0147 2C3C 2AC4









Interesting demonstration of why retreat to analogies does not help in a 
discussion.


A question:  If you stop announcing your routes, where will the world 
get them from?


--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)

Re: Standard terminology for a dark fiber path?

[Larry Sheldon]

On 2/24/2016 14:55, Fletcher Kittredge wrote:

What is the standard terminology for strands of dark fiber spliced together
to form a continuous path between points A and Z?

I have seen:

- *fiber circuit* [but also seen used to denote a connection at the
network layer over a physical fiber connection. This definition of circuit
would include the dark fiber path, the transmitters and receivers and logic
making up the data and network layers.]
- *fiber loop *[ Does a loop define an electrical circuit with two
physically separate positive and negative strands? In that case, is this a
Bellhead remnant? ]

I am particularly interested in last mile systems, but I don't see any
reason that the term wouldn't be the same in the middle mile.


What do you call it if it is made out of copper instead of glass?  Or air?

I don't see anything wrong with "fiber path".

(Answering my own question, maybe:  "dry pair from A to B". 
"[Microwave] Radio link between A and B.")




--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)

Re: Is it normal for your provider to withhold BGP peering info until the night of the cut?

[Larry Sheldon]

On 1/21/2016 15:33, Kraig Beahn wrote:

"This carrier said that they don't provide this until the night of the
cut." / "Is this a common SOP nowadays?" - Not in our experience.

On Thu, Jan 21, 2016 at 4:26 PM, c b  wrote:


We have 4 full-peering providers between two data centers. Our accounting
people did some shopping and found that there was a competitor who came in
substantially lower this year and leadership decided to swap our most
expensive circuit to the new carrier.
(I don't know what etiquette is, so I won't name the carrier... but it's a
well-known name)
Anyways, we were preparing for the circuit cutover and asked for the BGP
peering info up front like we normally do. This carrier said that they
don't provide this until the night of the cut. Now, we've done this 5 or 6
times over the years with all of our other carriers and this is the first
one to ever do this. We even escalated to our account manager and they
still won't provide it.
I know it's not a huge deal, but life is so much easier when you can
prestage your cut and rollback commands. In fact, our internal Change
Management process mandates peer review all proposed config changes and now
we have to explain why some lines say TBD!
Is this a common SOP nowadays? Anyone care to explain why they wouldn't
just provide it ahead of time?
Thanks in advance.
CWB




I have not been following this thread closely, but I'll bet I klnow why 
the new vendor is cheaper.


I have this theory that says accounting may not be the best place for 
technical OR engineering decision making (it destroyed the company I 
worked for for many years).


My theory (see the scientific usage of the word) is that "cheapest" is 
rarely "best" in any dimension INCLUDING "total cost".



--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)

Re: Looking for Yahoo eMail contact

[Larry Sheldon]

On 1/12/2016 03:47, Marc Storck wrote:

Today the situation cleared on it’s own as it appears. (at least I
haven’t been notified of any human action)


Ancient wire-line telephone and telegraph (aka "data" in the latter 
days) technology, trouble ticket code "CCWT" ("Came Clear While Testing").



--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)

Re: Looking for Yahoo eMail contact

[Larry Sheldon]

On 1/12/2016 15:15, Jonathan Smith wrote:

Wait I thought that was NTF, (No Trouble Found), as it magically cleared
up.  Amazing what was/is done to avoid reporting issues/problems to the
PUC or the like.


"NTF" is valid only if the reported condition was not observed by the 
reporter at all.  "CCWT" means the reporter observed the reported 
condition that disappeared while inserting or removing test cords, 
thumping on the bay iron, or correcting an unrelated adjustment.


Couple of short war stories--we had a scandal and investigation of the 
proportion of tickets that were closed "NTF".


Turns out that the night equipment man, as a matter of habit, every 
night when he arrived for work, retrieved a piece of 2 X 4 he had 
hidden, and whacked the end of every lineup on his way in.


In a different office, but the same kind of problem, one day the tool 
crib clerk stopped me and asked about a stack of tickets in an 
"analysis" project she had been assigned.


All of the tickets in the stack were mine, and they all referred to 
equipment that day-shift patched-out and wrote up that night-shift 
cleared as NTF or CCWT.  I had gotten tired of writing up the sad and 
detailed story every day and had started reporing them as "AFU"-- she 
wanted to know what "AFU" meant.


I told her it meant "All Fouled Up", where upon she picked up another 
stack, also mine, marked "NFG".


I told her those were the same at the AFU ones.


On Tue, Jan 12, 2016 at 2:11 PM, Larry Sheldon <larryshel...@cox.net
<mailto:larryshel...@cox.net>> wrote:

On 1/12/2016 03:47, Marc Storck wrote:

Today the situation cleared on it’s own as it appears. (at least I
haven’t been notified of any human action)


Ancient wire-line telephone and telegraph (aka "data" in the latter
days) technology, trouble ticket code "CCWT" ("Came Clear While
Testing").


--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)





--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)

Re: Looking for Yahoo eMail contact

[Larry Sheldon]

On 1/12/2016 19:04, Larry Sheldon wrote:

On 1/12/2016 15:15, Jonathan Smith wrote:

Wait I thought that was NTF, (No Trouble Found), as it magically cleared
up.  Amazing what was/is done to avoid reporting issues/problems to the
PUC or the like.


"NTF" is valid only if the reported condition was not observed by the
reporter at all.  "CCWT" means the reporter observed the reported
condition that disappeared while inserting or removing test cords,
thumping on the bay iron, or correcting an unrelated adjustment.


That is a really muddy statement--should have said:

"NTF" is valid only if the reported condition was not observed by the
tester at all.  "CCWT" means the tester observed the reported
condition, but disappeared while inserting or removing test cords,
thumping on the bay iron, or correcting an unrelated adjustment and not 
as a result of a palliative action.


--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)

Re: http://rtros.nop.hu/

[Larry Sheldon]

On 1/1/2016 02:40, Randy Bush wrote:

opinions?


yep.  do not click on strange urls.


ESPECIALLY when they:

Reek of malevolence
Have no reason given for why I might be interested in seeing the contents.
Are from somebody and someplace that I have never hear of before.



--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)

Re: Broadband Router Comparisons

[Larry Sheldon]

On 12/27/2015 19:56, Mike wrote:


On 12/27/15, 4:57 PM, Larry Sheldon wrote:

On 12/26/2015 23:49, Mike wrote:

[snip]


Firstly, they are all junk. Every last one of them. Period. Broadband
routers are designed to be cheap and to appeal to people who don't know
any better, and who respond well (eg: make purchasing decisions) based
on the shape of the plastic, the color scheme employed, and number of
mysterious blinking lights that convey 'something important is
happening'. Further, the price point is $45 - $70 thereabouts, putting
some definite constraints on the actual quality of the engineering and
components that go into them. I feel that we, the service provider,
endure a significantly high and undue burden of cost associated with
providing ongoing support to customers as a result of the defects
contained therein.


Why don't you offer an acceptable (to you) device at a price
acceptable to me as a part of the service.  I'd buy it.



NO SUCH DEVICE EXISTS, because you can't afford it. If I were to take
you seriously however - and we're talking about eliminating all excuses
and simply getting down to it and making a marginally qualified showing
at expecting uninterrupted service - the entire environment is what has
to be solved. The device would be cisco or juniper branded, internal
redundancy / failover features to allow hitless upgrades or module
failures, have dual (preferably, triple) power supplies, would be
required to be housed in a locked enclosure with air conditioning and
online double conversion battery with the addition of an external backup
generator with its own separate backup fuel supply, which is further
tested weekly and mantained with inspections and oil changes. The router
would be under service contract with the manufacturer, would be
monitoring by my noc, and would receive appropriate software upgrades as
required, and you would pay for this monthly in addition to your
internet service. Furthermore, you also would be required to have at
least two distinct connections to me and make a deposit to provide
credit in the event you falsely claim 'trouble' where no trouble exists.
A seperate 'test pc', also in it's own enclosure and normally offlimits
to you, and connected to said router and backup power and such, would be
agreed upon as the test fixture that we would monitor TO. It would
display current network statistics including packet loss and latencies
to various on and off-net locations, with current time and date logging
on screen. You would agree that you are to blame each and every time you
'can't get on', while the test pc clearly shows on it's local screen to
you otherwise. You would be required to forfeit a portion of your
deposit each time you called for technical support and were determined
to be at fault and to blame for your own issue.


I'll accept the challenge and try to be briefer.

If it can't be did at a price I'll accept, then let us stop crying about 
how bad it is.  You don't like it, turn it off.


(For the record, I do not require all of that stuff--if I am "grid off" 
then having a standby power system would be nice to power our CPAPs, but 
commo is going to be down and it might as well be dark and quiet.)


And for the matter of "false" failure reports--there IS a work around 
for you:  From Day ONE, Hour Zero, Minute Zero, Second Zero, supply 
stuff that WORKS the way your sales people said it would.


If you start out peddling crap that does not work, you will establish 
yourself as a peddler of crap and the first place to call.


I used to work for a company that did a pretty good job of doing that so 
when somebody did call they often sounded apologetic and tended to need 
to be convinced that, no this one is ours, but we are on it and we hope 
to be back at  HH:MM.


For people that purchased large quantities of what we sold we provided 
alarm displays or ring downs to tell THEM we broke something.



--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)

Re: Broadband Router Comparisons

[Larry Sheldon]

On 12/26/2015 23:49, Mike wrote:

On 12/23/2015 06:49 PM, Lorell Hathcock wrote:

All:

Not all consumer grade customer premises equipment is created
equally.  But end customers sure think it is.  I have retirement aged
customers buying the crappiest routers and then blaming my cable
network for all their connection woes.  The real problem is that there
were plenty of problems on the cable network to deal with, so it was
impossible to tell between a problem that a customer was having with
their CPE versus a real problem in my network.


OK, I have resisted, but now I must ask.

I am coming up on 77 YOA, been un-employed for a long time, have a tiny 
toy network that supports a couple of lap-tops, a couple of desk-tops, a 
couple of net-work-connected printers, and a melange of 
visitor-transported "personal devices" NOS--the latter group, the two 
lap-tops, one of the printers, and one of the desk-tops supported by 3 
wiffy radios (one radio is a port of the "routher").


My network sees the the world via a cable-company provided MODEM (which 
also supports the telephone service in the house) and a WRT54GL 
"router", which I guess is what y'all are talking about (although it 
looks to me more like a 6-port bridge that can do NAT).


I've had one "router" fail and replaced it.  I have myriad network 
failures that go away if I wait long enough (I have called in a few 
times, mostly to confirm that the cable has gone dark and they know it, 
a couple to have them tell me to reboot everything I rebooted before I 
called them.  In some of those incidents the "trouble came clear while 
testing", the rest "came clear while waiting for the repair man to get 
here".


Just what is it that I should be doing better?  And where is this better 
equipment available?


[tl;dr;wrn]

--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)

Re: Broadband Router Comparisons

[Larry Sheldon]

On 12/27/2015 02:19, valdis.kletni...@vt.edu wrote:

On Sun, 27 Dec 2015 08:37:25 +0100, Mikael Abrahamsson said:

If someone like Consumer Reports or similar agency started testing and
rating devices on these things like long-time support, automatic updates,
software quality etc, and not just testing wifi speed as a factor of
distance, we might get somewhere.


As finally we come full circle to the original question "who, if anybody,
has a list of which things are crap and which aren't" :)


Indeed.  Interesting how often that has happened here over the years.

Sometimes it seems more like one of those "counseling" cartoons with 
everybody sitting in a circle learning new words for their problem 
description.



--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)

Re: Broadband Router Comparisons

[Larry Sheldon]

On 12/26/2015 23:49, Mike wrote:

[snip]


Firstly, they are all junk. Every last one of them. Period. Broadband
routers are designed to be cheap and to appeal to people who don't know
any better, and who respond well (eg: make purchasing decisions) based
on the shape of the plastic, the color scheme employed, and number of
mysterious blinking lights that convey 'something important is
happening'. Further, the price point is $45 - $70 thereabouts, putting
some definite constraints on the actual quality of the engineering and
components that go into them. I feel that we, the service provider,
endure a significantly high and undue burden of cost associated with
providing ongoing support to customers as a result of the defects
contained therein.


Why don't you offer an acceptable (to you) device at a price acceptable 
to me as a part of the service.  I'd buy it.



--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)

Re: reliably detecting the presence of a bridge?

[Larry Sheldon]

On 12/19/2015 12:17, William Herrin wrote:

[snip]


I recommend you stop using the word "bridge." I think see where you're
heading with it, but I think you're chasing a blind alley which
encourages a false mental model of how layer 2 networks function. You
came here for answers. This is one of them.

"Bridge" describes a device which existed in layer 2 networks a
quarter century ago. You had a 10-base2 ethernet with every station
connected to a shared coax wire. Or you had a token ring where each
station was wired to the next station in a loop. Or if you were
sophisticated you had 10-baseT with a hub that repeated bits from any
port to all ports with no concept of packets.

And then you had a bridge which could connect these networks together,
buffering complete packets and smartly repeating only the packets
which belong on the other side. The bridge let you expand past the
distance limitations imposed by the ethernet collision domain, and it
let you move between two different speed networks.

These networks are now largely a historical curiousity. There are no
hubs, no 10-base2, no token passing rings. Not any more. Individual
stations now connect directly to a bridge device, which these days we
often call a "switch." Even where the stations have a shared media
(e.g. 802.11), the stations talk to the bridge, not to each other.

Bridge specifies a condition that, today, is close enough to always
true as makes no difference.


Super explanation.

But I still have one question (which might be based on errors)--

I think I have used WiFi terminals ("air ports", "WiFi routers" [spit]) 
that offer a "bridge" mode, apparently to build a dedicated radio link 
between two such terminals.


Are they operating as a Radia Perlman "bridge", or is this yet another 
example if the Wiffy World high-jacking words and terms that used to 
have actual meanings?



Nice write-up, even though it is sort of sad to be confronted with the 
fact that my experience and knowledge with hose-connected (10base5. 
10base2) or token-ring networks, and hubs, and stuff is now without 
value.  That is the very worst part of getting old.


Next objective:  Somebody to 'splain at what happened to the 
wonderfulness of the OSI model where layer X did not know, could not 
know, did not care what layer X-1 was, did, or how it did it.

--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)

Re: reliably detecting the presence of a bridge?

[Larry Sheldon]

On 12/19/2015 16:53, James R Cutler wrote:

[snip]


But I still have one question (which might be based on errors)--

I think I have used WiFi terminals ("air ports", "WiFi routers"
[spit]) that offer a "bridge" mode, apparently to build a dedicated
radio link between two such terminals.

Are they operating as a Radia Perlman "bridge", or is this yet
another example if the Wiffy World high-jacking words and terms
that used to have actual meanings?



Bridge Mode (ATT Passthrough) simply means that the router between
the WAN connection and the LAN/WiFi ports is turned off and all ports
share the same switch (so packets just “pass through”. Thus all ports
appear connected to a common switch.  Call that what you will, there
is no spanning tree here even though we all love Radia.


I have three radios in my little toy network (two because the original 
installation was in a big house that had annoying dead spots with only 
one, one because I had to replace the router and the router replacement 
included a radio).


I just looked at one (I'm pretty sure the others are similar of the 
same) that has a pick fir "AP Mode" which offers "Access Point (default) 
which is what I run, "AP Client", "Wireless Repeater" and "Wireless Bridge".


I just realized that I don't know (or don't remember--I am old) what the 
documentation says (see--I am so old I think there IS documentation and 
that it WILL explain stuff.)




-- sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)


Nobody.


Heh

--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)

Re: reliably detecting the presence of a bridge?

[Larry Sheldon]

On 12/19/2015 17:15, Larry Sheldon wrote:

On 12/19/2015 16:53, James R Cutler wrote:

[snip]


But I still have one question (which might be based on errors)--

I think I have used WiFi terminals ("air ports", "WiFi routers"
[spit]) that offer a "bridge" mode, apparently to build a dedicated
radio link between two such terminals.

Are they operating as a Radia Perlman "bridge", or is this yet
another example if the Wiffy World high-jacking words and terms
that used to have actual meanings?



Bridge Mode (ATT Passthrough) simply means that the router between
the WAN connection and the LAN/WiFi ports is turned off and all ports
share the same switch (so packets just “pass through”. Thus all ports
appear connected to a common switch.  Call that what you will, there
is no spanning tree here even though we all love Radia.


I have three radios in my little toy network (two because the original
installation was in a big house that had annoying dead spots with only
one, one because I had to replace the router and the router replacement
included a radio).

I just looked at one (I'm pretty sure the others are similar of the
same) that has a pick for "AP Mode" which offers "Access Point (default)
which is what I run, "AP Client", "Wireless Repeater" and "Wireless
Bridge".


I did not make it clear--this on is by no means a router--it has two 
interfaces, 10baseT, and radio.



I just realized that I don't know (or don't remember--I am old) what the
documentation says (see--I am so old I think there IS documentation and
that it WILL explain stuff.)


I did look it up, and now don't know as much as I did.

--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)

Re: Nat

[Larry Sheldon]

On 12/16/2015 18:14, Mel Beckman wrote:

Mark,

Why? Why do WE "need" to force people to bend to our will? The market
will get us all there eventually.

I don't like what you eat. Lets put a surcharge on it to make you
feel pain and do what I want. :)


That's what I'm talking about.

But this IS right out of the current government's handbook.
--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)

Re: Nat

[Larry Sheldon]

On 12/16/2015 17:28, Mark Andrews wrote:

+100

Nobody should have to be doing NAT today.

We need to make IPv4 painful to use.  Adding  delay between SYN and
SYN/ACK would be one way to achieve this.  Start at 100ms..200ms and
increase it by 100ms each year.



If it is such a good idea, why do you have to do that?




--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)

Re: Nat

[Larry Sheldon]

On 12/16/2015 19:22, Randy Bush wrote:

We need to put some pain onto everyone that is IPv4 only.


this is the oppress the workers so they will revolt theory.  load of
crap.

make ipv6 easier to deploy, especially in enterprise.  repeat the
previous sentence 42 times.

what keeps the cows in the pasture is the quality of the grass not
the height of the fence.



Have you considered national politics?  The world needs you.



--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)

Re: Devices with only USB console port - Need a Console Server Solution

[Larry Sheldon]

On 12/7/2015 16:15, Erik Sundberg wrote:

We have one of these nice new and fancy Cisco ASR920-24SZ, just
realized it doesn't have an RJ45 Console port only USB.


I am always surprised at people who unpack new toys that somebody paid a 
lot of money for only to find at that late date that the new toy does 
not fit into their defined (for some shaky value of "defined") structure.




--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)

Re: Modem as a service?

[Larry Sheldon]

On 12/6/2015 16:17, Karl Auer wrote:

On Sun, 2015-12-06 at 16:36 -0500, James R Cutler wrote:

On Dec 6, 2015, at 2:19 PM, James Laszko  wrote:

... we don’t need to actually connect to the OOB modem on the other side, we 
just need a NO ANSWER/ANSWER kind of response. …


Forget modems - to probe via some kind of analog connection, just get
a single instrument wireless telephone with answering capability.  For
a bonus, put some kind of identifier in the answering message:  No
power > no answer; power > answer.


I must be thick - how does that solve the problem? The OP wants to know
if a modem at a remote site will answer the phone. Maybe I misunderstood
the problem.


I'll join the confusion--I thought the OP wanted to test for power 
availability at the distant site by seeing if a modem there would answer 
the phone there.  That it HAD to be a modem in that case makes no sense 
to me.


I'm of the line now and have been for a while and maybe y'all don't do 
things the way we did--we always had an answering machine (two or three 
in some places*) that always answered on the first ring and gave some 
kind of status report that was updated hourly on on event).  If it did 
not answer, the power was out.


*at one site we had one that gave general status--what's up, what's 
down, what's generally interesting (outages scheduled soon, where we are 
in the daily batch cycle).  We had another listing southern region 
outputs ready for pick-up and one listing northern region stuff.



--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)

Re: DNSSEC and ISPs faking DNS responses

[Larry Sheldon]

On 11/14/2015 16:48, Roland Dobbins wrote:

On 15 Nov 2015, at 2:25, John Levine wrote:


They have point'n'click apps for all the usual platforms.


They are not defaults.

I think that many people on this list don't understand that the vast
majority of users around the world do not know what a VPN is, do not
know why they might need one, and aren't especially adept at installing
applications, even from 'apps stores'.


It would be interesting to see a credible, referred study of this.

_I_ think the IT world continues to minimize and denigrate the abilities 
and interests of its customers at its own, great peril.

--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)

Re: DNSSEC and ISPs faking DNS responses

[Larry Sheldon]

On 11/14/2015 16:56, Larry Sheldon wrote:

On 11/14/2015 16:48, Roland Dobbins wrote:

On 15 Nov 2015, at 2:25, John Levine wrote:


They have point'n'click apps for all the usual platforms.


They are not defaults.

I think that many people on this list don't understand that the vast
majority of users around the world do not know what a VPN is, do not
know why they might need one, and aren't especially adept at installing
applications, even from 'apps stores'.


It would be interesting to see a credible, referred study of this.

_I_ think the IT world continues to minimize and denigrate the abilities
and interests of its customers at its own, great peril.



Even if the mythical "where is the 'any' key" calls happen at a rate, 
globally, of one a minute, there are still tens of thousands of 
customers unheard-from who are devising ways to get their work done in 
spite of your best attempts to prevent it.


--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)

Re: All in favor or.....

[Larry Sheldon]

On 10/28/2015 19:15, Matthew Petach wrote:

I work 8 hours a day...

...and then I work another 8.


A long time ago, in a place far, far away, the PTB determined that we 
should change from a three-team, three-8-hour shifts, 5 days a week 
("days", "evenings", and "nights" (aka "graves" or "graveyard") for 7 x 
24 coverage, to a four-team, 12 1/2 hour day 3 day week (and you know, I 
have forgotten how we covered the 7th day!).


For the 2nd-level managers like me, the reaction was "Wow!  I will only 
have to work 12-18 hours three days a week!

--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)

Re: All in favor or.....

[Larry Sheldon]

On 10/25/2015 10:35, Jim Popovitch wrote:

All in favor of 9x5 network operations say aye.


"9x5"?


--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)

Re: Does no one monitor the list on weekends?

[Larry Sheldon]

On 10/26/2015 13:17, Jim Mercer wrote:

On Sun, Oct 25, 2015 at 09:59:40PM -0400, Robert Webb wrote:

This spam is ridiculous!


it should be noted that it has been flowing all weekend, and nobody really
complained or even commented on it until this morning.

so, yeah, maybe the list is on auto-pilot, which is totally understandable.

however, all the members seemed to be on auto-pilot as well.

(or maybe enjoying their weekend)


Or used to being ignored at best and banned at worst.


--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)

Re: the crap mail flood and the nanog culture

[Larry Sheldon]

On 10/25/2015 17:22, Randy Bush wrote:

you might think that with all the committees, boards, badges, ... that
there was an actual operator in the nanog resume building circle who
would actually do something useful about the crap mail flood now into
its second day.


I have been discarding it for more than two days!

In response to "you might think", that would assume that there is a 
formal belief that abuse of the network (even revenue abuse) is bad.



--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)

Re: Can someone do something about this "Fw: New message" spam?

[Larry Sheldon]

On 10/25/2015 13:22, Paul S. wrote:

Hi,

Can someone from the moderator team take a look?

This has been going on for a while.


For a week or two, I think.  Why the sudden interest?

--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)

Re: *tap tap* is this thing on?

[Larry Sheldon]

On 10/25/2015 17:56, Brielle Bruns wrote:

This spam flood is kinda hilarious in a way.  Any idea why no one with
mod or admin privs for the mailing list has bothered to step in and deal
with this?


You can find people who have been convinced that NANOG is fundamentally 
pro-abuse because to many of them, it is revenue traffic.


--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)

Re: Why is NANOG not being blacklisted like any other provider that sent 500 spam messages in 3 days?

[Larry Sheldon]

On 10/26/2015 18:31, Keith Medcalf wrote:



Myth: blah blah blah social media is a bad way to get ahold of
netops/abuse.
Fact: Social media is an acceptable way to report abuse.  My marketing
department certainly knows how to get ahold of me when such an issue
occurs. It's 2015, and if you and everyone you know isn't watching twitter
I can't help you, because you've gone braindead.


Whats a Twitter?  Is it IRC on a web-page for the addle, sort of like a 
"web-forum" is Usenet for the addle?

Never used a "Twitter".  Web Forums rately.  The 1 D 10 T quotient is too high 
..


The Pony Express has been dead for years, what DO you use if email 
doesn't work?



--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)

Re: Uptick in spam

[Larry Sheldon]

On 10/26/2015 22:26, Andrew Kirch wrote:

not even close to more discussing than from the original spam.  Not even
close.


Not even in the same order of magnitude, I don't think.



--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)

Re: The spam is real

[Larry Sheldon]

On 10/26/2015 22:16, Randy Bush wrote:

now that the number of messages discussing the spam has exceed the
number of spam messages, perhaps we can get back to work and hope that
the list admins have learned something.


A couple of factoids that might be useful in realizing the hope.

The mail handler at Cox cable correctly binned about 600 of them--I 
don't remember setting relevant customization, but I can check if 
anybody cares.


And I found messages reporting the problem Saturday.  And one that said 
the problem (as my failing memory wants to believe) started about a 
month ago.



--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)

Re: Current IPv4 Options

[Larry Sheldon]

Sitting in exactly the same position.  IPv6 is great and all, but running
my business natively on IPv6 means nothing to me if my customers can't
reach me.


Dang!  It is a bloody shame that the PTB (or was it the Cabal?) did not 
see fit to tell us this might happen some day so we could have made 
plans and made preparations and stuff.



--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)

Re: Spamhaus contact needed

[Larry Sheldon]

On 10/15/2015 00:27, Jason Baugher wrote:

Sorry to clutter up this list with an email issue, but hopefully someone is
here from Spamhaus that can contact me off-list. I have a customer whose IP
keeps getting listed in the CBL, and even after doing packet captures of
everything in and out of their network, I still can't find a reason for it.


I have been off the line for quite a while, but as I recollect there is 
no "Spamhaus contact" aside from the search engine they provide for 
their database.


You look-up you IP, they tell you what the problem is, you fix it, and 
the block goes away.


It always used to work.  Every time.


--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)

Re: Spamhaus contact needed

[Larry Sheldon]

On 10/15/2015 12:32, Larry Sheldon wrote:

On 10/15/2015 00:27, Jason Baugher wrote:

Sorry to clutter up this list with an email issue, but hopefully
someone is
here from Spamhaus that can contact me off-list. I have a customer
whose IP
keeps getting listed in the CBL, and even after doing packet captures of
everything in and out of their network, I still can't find a reason
for it.


I have been off the line for quite a while, but as I recollect there is
no "Spamhaus contact" aside from the search engine they provide for
their database.

You look-up your IP, they tell you what the problem is, you fix it, and
the block goes away.

It always used to work.  Every time.


WAIT A MINUTE!  "CBL" is not "Spamhaus", is it?!

http://www.abuseat.org/

--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)

Re: Spamhaus contact needed

[Larry Sheldon]

On 10/15/2015 13:27, Larry Sheldon wrote:

On 10/15/2015 12:32, Larry Sheldon wrote:

On 10/15/2015 00:27, Jason Baugher wrote:

Sorry to clutter up this list with an email issue, but hopefully
someone is
here from Spamhaus that can contact me off-list. I have a customer
whose IP
keeps getting listed in the CBL, and even after doing packet captures of
everything in and out of their network, I still can't find a reason
for it.


I have been off the line for quite a while, but as I recollect there is
no "Spamhaus contact" aside from the search engine they provide for
their database.

You look-up your IP, they tell you what the problem is, you fix it, and
the block goes away.

It always used to work.  Every time.


WAIT A MINUTE!  "CBL" is not "Spamhaus", is it?!

http://www.abuseat.org/



MY BAD!  Yes, it is "spamhaus".

Sorry.


--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)

Re: Fw: important message

[Larry Sheldon]

On 10/8/2015 16:53, Job Snijders wrote:

On Thu, Oct 08, 2015 at 02:37:15PM -0700, Scott Berkman via NANOG wrote:

Hello!

Important message, please read 


smells compromised, moderation flag has been enabled. don't click that
link, sorry.


Every indication that it as you think, or worse.

It it being propagated (by|to) NANOG and Outages (that I know of).

It has been going on for some time.  As is my habit, I have tried to get 
help in shutting it down, but as you might expect, there is zero 
interest at the administration level in the problem.


Eventually some low-clue person will get burned bad and depending on how 
big the splash is some interest may arise.



--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)

Re: CHP website returning 503

[Larry Sheldon]

On 9/28/2015 00:24, Christopher Morrow wrote:

On Mon, Sep 28, 2015 at 12:42 AM,   wrote:

On Sun, 27 Sep 2015 21:21:41 -0700, Joe Hamelin said:

It is late Sunday night.  When would you do maintenance?


If it isn't important enough to get a loadbalancer (or other HA solution)
and a second server so you can do maintenance without anybody noticing,
you *deserve* to have it noticed when the disk drive fails on the non-HA
server.


Are telling me Eric Estrada won't have a loadbalancer deployed for
this super critical resource?



I find the cavalier, screw-en attitude instructive.

Does anybody know (I didn't ask "care", I can see that) what the 
function of the site is?  What citizen or patrolman services have been lost?


--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)

Malware? Spammer?

[Larry Sheldon]

Does NANOG have a problem, or do I have a more local masquerader?
--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)

Re: [ih] Fiction->History

[Larry Sheldon]

On 9/24/2015 10:56, Bill Ricker wrote:

On Wed, Sep 23, 2015 at 10:27 PM, Larry Sheldon <larryshel...@cox.net>
wrote:



Fiction->History


​There are two sorts of SciFi (aside from the Fantastic) - those that
aren't facts yet​

​but likely will be if we persevere, and ​those that could be facts if we
screw things up even worse. Those writing near-term SF are well advised to
leverage  William Gibson's aphorism "The future is already here - it's just
not evenly distributed" to sniff out what is in the labs and the pockets of
the early adopters.



​
In 1977 there was a book titled “The Adolescence of P-1” (Thomas Joseph
Ryan)



I thought I remembered this was either serialized or first appeared as a
novella in one of the magazines before release as a book, but Google finds
no proof of that? Odd.
There was a flurry of pre-cyber-punk AI / rogue-programmer stories in
Analog in the late 70's, i recall one featured a female hacker but i forget
the title, and that it was the month before or after P-1 so it seemed a
trend.


I guess I had forgotten how much there is--I was a Heinlein reader 
sub-teen but in general lost interest in SciFi--this book and "Contact" 
(and maybe "Broca's Brain") are the only ones that come to mind since 
then (unless you want to include George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, Ayn Rand, 
and George Lucas).


I mentioned "P-1" here because it is the only one of the lot (that I can 
remember) where the _network_ is a (the) major protagonist.

 ​


--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)

Re: Skype off line ??

[Larry Sheldon]

On 9/21/2015 03:37, Larry Sheldon wrote:

On 9/21/2015 03:32, Marco Paesani wrote:

Hi,
do you have some news about it ?
Best regards,


I get a log-in screen.

Do you have a fact to go with your question?


Turns out the log-in screen is the last last sign or life--submitting 
username and password gets you a never-ending throbber.


How weird.


--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)

Re: Skype off line ??

[Larry Sheldon]

On 9/21/2015 03:32, Marco Paesani wrote:

Hi,
do you have some news about it ?
Best regards,


I get a log-in screen.

Do you ha a fact to go with your question?


--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)

Re: Extraneous "legal" babble--and my reaction to it.

[Larry Sheldon]

On 9/9/2015 08:36, Dovid Bender wrote:

I am trying to understand why the legal babble bothers anyone. Does
it give you a nervous twitch?


Your disrespectful query is not really worthy of a answer because it is 
obviously not asked in good faith, but I am going to try to answer it it 
because there may be others who actually are interested in my answers.


Remind you why you hate legal?

That sentence does not make any sense to me.  I don't hate much, 
certainly not "legal", what ever that might turn out to mean,


 It's

just text at the bottom of your email.


That has been the answer of rogues and renegades to network messaging 
abuse since before there was an Internet.


Now to try and answer "why does it bother me?"  (There are already clues 
in what I have said above, but I am guessing that th4 OP is not into 
"clues" much.)


I am old school and I still try, in an increasingly hostile world, to 
deal with electronic messages in the order of real time, with the oldest 
material at the top and the newest at the bottom.


I am old school and still believe in not causing read-before-writes, not 
violating blocking-factor protocols, and not forcing people to pay for 
the transmission of bits they don't want, don't need, and did not ask 
for--especially if the bits are hostile and are carrying spam, viruses, 
trojans, or legal traps into which the receiver might innocently blunder.


In the instant case it is this latter aspect that concerns me most as 
recipient--I did not ask for the message carrying it, I have no idea 
what about the message puts me at risk, and on and on through a number 
of arguments that others have covered well.


I am old, unemployed, unemployable, in less than robust health, and I 
don't think I could survive being dragged into court because of 
something I did (or did not do) and I could not survive the expense of 
my defense and of the almost-certain adverse judgement the courts seem 
bound to hand down these days.


And in the instant case (not always the case) the 11 1/2 word query 
struck me as ingenuous that would have been more appropriate in a 
high-school class*; and I looked elsewhere in the message to see if I 
could work out why somebody would ask that kind of a question in this 
kind of forum.


*I am still undecided on that question.




--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)

Re: Extraneous "legal" babble--and my reaction to it.

[Larry Sheldon]

On 9/9/2015 20:22, Larry Sheldon wrote:

I can not believe (except as, perhaps, an irrefutable sign of my 
advancing years) that I did not mention the very personal objection to 
the apparently content-free Wile E. Coyote legalese pollution:


The irrefutable fact that in years (and administrations) past I was 
banned from NANOG for offenses that to me today seem more defensible and 
a great deal less egregious than in the instant case.


--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)

Re: Extraneous "legal" babble--and my reaction to it.

[Larry Sheldon]

On 9/9/2015 10:23, Alan Buxey wrote:

It's just text at the bottom of your email.


1 often a very large amount of text - in this case the legalese was
something like 10x longer than the comment! 2 its pointless. Its not
enforceable and doesn't mean anything.

Shall i put a chapter of war and peace at the end of my emails?  You
could just ignore it.   ;)


I have been thinking that Lipsum Ipsum would be more in keeping with the 
spirit of uselessness here.




--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)

Re: Extraneous "legal" babble--and my reaction to it.

[Larry Sheldon]

On 9/8/2015 03:31, Rich Kulawiec wrote:

On Sun, Sep 06, 2015 at 09:14:02PM +, Connor Wilkins wrote:

Honestly.. the best method is to not let it bug you anymore. It's
only a seething issue to you because you let it be.


Curiously enough, the same thing was said about spam 30-ish years ago.
The "ignore it and maybe it will go away" approach did not yield
satisfactory results.

These "disclaimers" are stupid and abusive.  They have no place in
*any* email traffic, and most certainly not in a professional forum.
And it is unreasonable to expect the recipients of the demands and
threats they embody to silently tolerate them ad infinitum.


Exactly so.
JHD


--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)

Re: internet visualization

[Larry Sheldon]

On 9/8/2015 21:05, Joly MacFie wrote:

​3/10 for spelling


adjancencies​


or is that a thing?


http://www.thefreedictionary.com/adjacencies


--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)

Re: Extraneous "legal" babble--and my reaction to it.

[Larry Sheldon]

On 9/6/2015 14:18, Scott Weeks wrote:



--- rdr...@direcpath.com wrote:
From: Robert Drake 

Maybe people could adopt an unofficial-official
end-of-signature flag.  Then you could have
procmail strip everything after the flag:
-


It could be much easier.  Folks that care about the
mailing list rules, want to be courteous to list
folks and want to use their company email, rather
than one that inserts no disclaimer, could put 15
lines of blank as part of their signature.  This
would force all the crap far enough down the page
that it wouldn't be bothersome.



Since nobody uses Telebit Trailblazers anymore--that is probably not a 
bad idea.



--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)

Re: Extraneous "legal" babble--and my reaction to it.

[Larry Sheldon]

On 9/6/2015 11:46, Robert Drake wrote:


Maybe people could adopt an unofficial-official end-of-signature flag.
Then you could have procmail strip everything after the flag:
 --
 This is my signature
 My phone number goes here
 I like dogs
 -- end of signature --
 Everything below here and to the right of here was inserted by my
mailserver, which is run by lawyers who don't understand you can't
enforce contracts through emails to public mailing lists. Please delete
if you're not the intended recipient.


Of course, when you route around something like this it usually comes
back 10 fold, but maybe if it became worthless they might do things the
right way and put stuff like this in email headers.

X-Optional-Flags:  Delete-if-not-intended-recipient,
might-contain-secret-company-information-we-didn't-bother-to-encrypt

Then let the email clients try to work out what that means.


Please see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signature_block

I thought that was in rfc 2822, but I can not find it.






--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)

Re: internet visualization

[Larry Sheldon]

On 9/5/2015 19:15, Jared Mauch wrote:


OT: hit delete, or shameless plug disclaimer

one of my colleagues just posted this visualiation
of the internet from the as_path view of 2914.  if you are on
a mobile, you have to physically move your device around.

http://as2914.net/

If you love it, send Job your accolades.  If you hate it,
see above disclaimer.  If in a country with a holiday on monday,
enjoy it safely.


FarOUT!

Outstanding.

Please forward my accolades.

(Is a "you are here" possible?)




- Jared




--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)

Re: Software Defined Networking

[Larry Sheldon]

On 9/4/2015 12:57, Aaron C. de Bruyn wrote:

I think it's time to change my SMTP greeting to:

220-By submitting e-mail to this server, you agree all legal
disclaimers are null and void.
220 You also agree that I am awesome.


I like that.  Unfortunately, I no longer operate a mail host.

I have been trying to figure out how to mechanically route messages 
containing them to the spam sump.


IANAL, but I thing an interesting case would be trying to enforce that 
crap in a situation involving unsolicited email (as in this case).


--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)

Extraneous "legal" babble--and my reaction to it.

[Larry Sheldon]

Y'all can stop thumping on me about it "because it is required by the 
employer".


After contemplating my navel for a while, it dawned on me that my 
sensitivity is due to an old wound.


Years ago, Faculty, Staff, Students, and myriad others more or less 
loosely connected with my employer complained that they could never make 
contact with me.


As a defensive measure (among others) I crafted a .sig that contained 
all of the telephone numbers and email addresses by which I could be 
reached (included a pager number) 7 x 24 x 52 with (guaranteed) no more 
than 20 minute delay.


It ran to 7 lines, including the dash dash space EOL protocol sentinel.

I was banned from NANOG because of the excessive length.  (And yes, I 
got banned for other things at other times as well, mostly having to to 
do with trying to protect the network I administered from abuse.)

--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)

Re: Extraneous "legal" babble--and my reaction to it.

[Larry Sheldon]

On 9/4/2015 14:40, Aaron C. de Bruyn wrote:

There's quite a difference between the 'legal babble' and 'contact
info' at the end of a message.


What part of "required by employer" is different?

I'm not seeing it.


--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)

Re: Software Defined Networking

[Larry Sheldon]

On 9/4/2015 09:40, Rod Beck wrote:

Can anyone provide references on this top so I can educate myself?

This e-mail and any attachments thereto is intended only for use by
the addressee(s) named herein and may be proprietary and/or legally
privileged. If you are not the intended recipient of this e-mail, you
are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying
of this email, and any attachments thereto, without the prior written
permission of the sender is strictly prohibited. If you receive this
e-mail in error, please immediately telephone or e-mail the sender
and permanently delete the original copy and any copy of this e-mail,
and any printout thereof. All documents, contracts or agreements
referred or attached to this e-mail are SUBJECT TO CONTRACT. The
contents of an attachment to this e-mail may contain software viruses
that could damage your own computer system. While Hibernia Networks
has taken every reasonable precaution to minimize this risk, we
cannot accept liability for any damage that you sustain as a result
of software viruses. You should carry out your own virus checks
before opening any attachment.



All of that for 11 1/2 words?

Ineducable.
--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)

Re: ATT att.net postmaster contact needed

[Larry Sheldon]

On 8/10/2015 12:43, Ken Chase wrote:


please reply offlist, mutual customer issue.


Seems like this exact question comes up pretty frequently.

Maybe NANOG should consider a repository of frequent inquiries...


--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)

Re: Working with Spamhaus

[Larry Sheldon]

On 7/29/2015 00:58, Larry Sheldon wrote:

On 7/29/2015 00:37, Matt Palmer wrote:


I suspect that http://www.spamhaus.org/query/ip/199.87.233.245 may be
part
of it (although it indicates a /21 blocked, not a /17).


And the removal instructions for that range (SBL) seems crystal clear to
me, but long experience teaches that what is crystal clear to me is
often to clear at all to spammers.


I am surprised that I have not been banned again for talking about spam 
here, so I'll leave you with this (from the information Matt provided):


http://www.spamhaus.org/sbl/query/SBL263089

Has these notations:

SBL263068 104.224.252.0/27 esited.com 2015-07-25 Spamming for fake products
SBL260293 104.224.197.94 whdot.com 2015-06-25 Spam source @104.224.197.94
SBL257796 104.224.205.144/28 whdot.com 2015-05-27 brand-fraud websites 
hosted on hacked subdomain
SBL253760 104.201.2.88 zeroddos.com 2015-04-16 Blackhat SEO spammer 
hosting @104.201.2.88
SBL249474 104.232.128.0/19 esited.com 2015-03-09 snowshoe range - 
CLOUDDDOS TECHNOLOGY CO.,LIMITED (AS22552)
SBL244070 104.221.128.0/17 esited.com 2015-01-05 snowshoe range - eSited 
Solutions
SBL244052 104.195.0.0/18 esited.com 2015-01-05 snowshoe range - eSited 
Solutions (NL-1)
SBL241541 104.201.0.0/18 esited.com 2014-12-02 Kuang Ren snowshoe range 
- ZERO DDOS LLC
SBL241495 69.87.192.0/20 d esited.com 2014-12-01 Kuang Ren snowshoe 
range - eSited Solutions (NL-1)
SBL241492 23.249.176.0/20 esited.com 2014-12-01 Kuang Ren snowshoe range 
- GCHAO LLC

SBL241491 66.254.160.0/19 esited.com 2014-12-01 Kuang Ren snowshoe range
SBL241489 162.247.232.0/21 esited.com 2014-12-01 Kuang Ren snowshoe range
SBL234439 104.167.64.0/19 esited.com 2014-09-14 spam emitters - ZERO 
DDOS LLC

SBL226660 199.87.239.226/31 esited.com 2014-06-27 DNS for spam domains
SBL223484 167.88.192.0/20 esited.com 2014-05-26 spam emitters - ZERO 
DDOS LLC

SBL207432 199.87.233.92 esited.com 2013-12-12 spam site - 78high.ss99g.com
SBL207431 199.87.239.226 esited.com 2013-12-12 spam redirector at 
zjjj58.com / s9gg.com



Removal Procedure

To have record SBL263089 (199.87.232.0/21) removed from the SBL, the 
Abuse/Security representative of esited.com (or the Internet Service 
Provider responsible for supplying connectivity to 199.87.232.0/21) 
needs to contact the SBL Team by email (use this link) to explain how 
the abuse problem has been terminated (we need to know exactly how the 
issue has been dealt with and that this abuse problem is fully 
terminated). If the abuse problem that caused this listing has been 
terminated we will normally remove the listing from the SBL without delay.


It is essential that emails to the SBL Team about this SBL listing 
include this exact ticket information in the email Subject:


If you are a representative of esited.com, you also need to see: Current 
Live esited.com SBL Listings






--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)

Re: Working with Spamhaus

[Larry Sheldon]

On 7/29/2015 00:37, Matt Palmer wrote:


I suspect that http://www.spamhaus.org/query/ip/199.87.233.245 may be part
of it (although it indicates a /21 blocked, not a /17).


And the removal instructions for that range (SBL) seems crystal clear to 
me, but long experience teaches that what is crystal clear to me is 
often to clear at all to spammers.


What is it about Colorado?



--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)

Re: Windows 10 Release

[Larry Sheldon]

On 7/29/2015 06:58, STARNES, CURTIS wrote:

I see that everyone can download Windows 10 this morning!
There goes my bandwidth.


Just checked this PC--apparently I already have it and am good to go.

I was expecting an email or something.

--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)

Re: Windows 10 Release

[Larry Sheldon]

On 7/29/2015 07:20, Scott Helms wrote:

It's downloading for me right now, though I did reserve my slot.


When I checked a few minutes ago it said my PC had passed the tests--now 
it says it is downloading.


Speed and responsiveness feels normal.



--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)

Re: Windows 10 Release

[Larry Sheldon]

On 7/29/2015 07:32, Larry Sheldon wrote:

On 7/29/2015 07:20, Scott Helms wrote:

It's downloading for me right now, though I did reserve my slot.


When I checked a few minutes ago it said my PC had passed the tests--now
it says it is downloading.

Speed and responsiveness feels normal.



Screen popped up just now--said something to effect of Now or later? 
I said later (haven't been to been in a while, have three other machines 
to coordinate with).


It offered me later today, tomorrow, or the next day!

This may hurt after all.


--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)

Re: Windows 10 Release

[Larry Sheldon]

On 7/29/2015 10:30, frnk...@iname.com wrote:

Some concern expressed here:
http://blog.streamingmedia.com/2015/07/windows-10-launch-huge-traffic.html


I have no status above out-of-work old fart, and it has been a while 
since I was engaged in anything bigger than my four-PC, three-wiffy, one 
router network who still does not like Microsoft very much, but it seems 
clear to me that a lot of Big Disaster Windows 10 Experts have not read 
anything about what is actually going on.


So far, it has not worked here anything like what that article describes.



--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)

Re: Windows 10 Release

[Larry Sheldon]

On 7/29/2015 06:58, STARNES, CURTIS wrote:

I see that everyone can download Windows 10 this morning!
There goes my bandwidth.


One of us does not understand how they said it was going to be done.

--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)

Re: Windows 10 Release

[Larry Sheldon]

On 7/28/2015 15:45, Nick Olsen wrote:


  Wonder if they'll stage the release as apple appeared to have learned
after IOS7 hammered a bunch of networks.


Everything I have gotten for my personal machines suggests that it may 
be months before my copies are released.




--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)

Re: Working with Spamhaus

[Larry Sheldon]

On 7/28/2015 22:06, Bryan Tong wrote:


If anyone has any advice on how to deal with these people. Please let me
know here or off list.


Based on years of experience, the very best way  is don't.  Don't 
profit from spam, and as a result don't deal with Spamhaus at all.



--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)

Re: Working with Spamhaus

[Larry Sheldon]

On 7/29/2015 00:24, goe...@anime.net wrote:

On Tue, 28 Jul 2015, Larry Sheldon wrote:

On 7/28/2015 22:06, Bryan Tong wrote:

If anyone has any advice on how to deal with these people. Please let me
know here or off list.

Based on years of experience, the very best way  is don't.


You have to work pretty hard to get a /17 listed.


Don't profit from spam, and as a result don't deal with Spamhaus at all.


Yep.


Some days NANOG sounds like NANA-E.



--
sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Juvenal)