RE: NOC communications

["Derek Elder" <delder () graypeak com>]

How about a major oversimplification of a fix.  Closed mailing list.  One
primary contact for each company is designated and allowed to join the list.
Every 2 weeks (maybe a month?) an email is autogenerated that must be ACK'd
or that companies NOC entry is considered stale.  The person on the mailing
list is responsible for ensuring contact info is updated.

Participants in the list would be able to send a request to the list for
current info on another noc...not a web page.  Something more along the line
of:

To:  noc-list () whoever com
From: authorized () whoever1 com
Subject:  NOC: usweb.com

The mailing list would respond with the most current NOC information -- and
the info could be distributed so if one server was down, another server
could be queried.  Elimiates the spammer friendly 'whois'.  Hey, maybe it
could even provide a time-sensitive response :)

The contact info that is provided is kept -confidential- between the
participants of the list, though some leakage will happen.  Maybe getting
address space would have a requirement that the company have a participant.

Now, any volunteers for housing the database?  Maybe ARIN...

BTW, I think the line printer idea rules :)



Derek Elder
US Web / Gray Peak Technologies
Network Engineering
212-548-7468
Pager - 888-232-5028
delder () graypeak com
http://www.usweb.com
A Strategic Partner for the
Information Age.




-----Original Message-----
From: owner-nanog () merit edu [mailto:owner-nanog () merit edu]On Behalf Of
Michael Dillon
Sent: Monday, July 13, 1998 5:17 PM
To: nanog () merit edu
Subject: Re: NOC communications


On Mon, 13 Jul 1998, Sean Donelan wrote:

> The contact information which I only give out directly to other NOCs has
> NEVER been abused.

Here is the key to this problem. How can you publish contact information
in such a way that it only goes to other NOCs. And conversely, how can you
ensure that you have access to the contact information of all other NOCs.
I suspect that there may be a way for the IP registries (ARIN, RIPE and
APNIC) to facilitate this with some kind of replicated database in which
change notifications only go out to entities listed in the database. That
way every NOC could maintain their own complete copy of a global NOC
contacts database and the only need for queries would be to process update
notifications and do the occasional resync with the master copy.

> Yeah, right.
>
>    Dear Sprint, Vab is gone.  Since you have not updated your contact
>    information in a prompt fashion, your AS numbers will be withdrawn
>    at Midnight.  Have a nice day.

This *WILL* be happening in the near future. Not maintaining up to date
contact info is tantamount to aiding and abetting DoS attacks. It won't be
long now before there is some government scrutiny of operational practices
which are related to finding and fixing failures fast.

> That is until they read about themselves on the front-page
> of the New York Times.  Then the managers start yelling at the engineers
> "Why didn't you tell us it was a problem."

Smart engineers are proactive and warn their managers of the dangers of
not following prudent operational practices.

> Maybe we can have this discussion again in another six months.

Please do. I know that your regular rehashing of these issues has had a
positive impact on a lot of providers.

--
Michael Dillon                 -               Internet & ISP Consulting
Memra Communications Inc.      -               E-mail: michael () memra com
Check the website for my Internet World articles -  http://www.memra.com