Re: Final transition steps

[Elise Gerich <epg () merit edu>]

Sean,

> Sean Doran writes:
>
> Um, are these April 21 disconnections going to be permanent,
> or is this just a test of limited duration (six or seven
> hours, say)?

If no one notices and there are no problems, they will be
permanent.

> If the turn-off is going to last a long time then the NSFNET
> International Connectivity Project will need MERIT to
> process and have installed, no later than this Wednesday, a
> NACR with changes to about 16000 prefixes. We can prepare
> the NACR this weekend.

If this is temporary does that mean we have to do 16000 NACRs
next week instead?

> We will also need to know whether this is a full turn-off of
> the NSFNET backbone service next Friday as it will affect
> our immediate plans for turning up an ICM DS3 connection to
> MAE-EAST+, effectively moving the timing of that forward a
> few days.

This will be a semi-full turn-off of the NSFNET backbone service.
The interconnects will remain in place.  Those interconnects
and the associated ASs are listed in a separate message to
the wider world.

> (To get the ICM DS3 up and running on time for the 21st
> (instead of before the 30th) we have some timing issues that
> are pretty critical, namely provisioning the DS3 and
> installing all the equipment.  It is unclear that this is
> possible on the MFS side (never mind the paperwork process,
> which we probably will just have to ignore in the short run).
> What is clear though is that current connectivity to
> MAE-EAST is insufficient for making 21 April a happy day --
> ICM is transiting SprintLink's (too full) DS3 to MAE-EAST,
> and using the FIX to reach the fednets and the networks
> which have not yet transitioned; the current DS3 can't
> support moving 10Mbps from the FIX, and don't even mention
> the ethernet that ICM still has today).

If there are serious problems, please contact merit-ie and the 
on-call engineer will work with you (we don't do paperwork though).

> I am not opposed to the idea, nor to the implementation of
> this push towards finding alternate connectivity.  However,
> I'm pretty annoyed that we got very short notice of what
> appears to be an early shutdown of the NSFNET backbone
> service.  This is especially irritating as a shutdown on the
> 21st will dramatically affect routing worldwide, and force a
> rewrite of a number of transition schedules which have been
> in place for quite some time.
>
> However, let's run with it.  We'll know early in the week
> when Peter, Vadim and I have spent alot more time on 
> moving ICM transition forward how bad things will be 
> at 9am on the 21st as opposed to the evening of the 26th,
> and then again late at night on the 30th.
>
> Right now, I humbly request that MERIT wearing its RA hat
> quickly (i.e., this weekend, and certainly no later than
> Wednesday morning) locates an RS at FIX-EAST so that ICM can
> more rapidly bring up safe peering with the FIX-EAST
> connectees than we had initially planned (i.e., we need to
> have functional peering and transit set up this week instead
> of using this week to debug things with the fednets who are
> facing disconnectivity as of the 30th).   

We love to provide RA service everywhere and anywhere - it's just
a matter of somebody contracting for the service.  Any volunteers?

> This RS should be seeded from the ENSS145 configurations
> rather than any other source.
>
> Having something in place at FIX-EAST which does the same
> filtering that the AS 690 PRDB mechanism did has now been
> made much more urgent than it was yesterday, so that we can
> avoid rushing direct peerings, which traditionally has
> resulted in serious routing botches that the whole world
> notices.

Thanks for the vote of confidence. 

      --Elise