Re: The questions stand

[Karl Denninger <karl () mcs net>]

On Thu, May 21, 1998 at 12:44:11AM -0400, John Fraizer - Administrator wrote:
> At 05:17 PM 5/20/98 -0400, you wrote:
> > I do so wish we could get over the "tier" fixation.
> >
> > If I start the Tampa Bay Internet Exchange, let's say, and I haul in
> > OC-3 links from the 5 top backbones, and DS-3's to the 4 NAP's, I can
> > then (very likely) a) resell bandwidth to local ISP's for quite a bit less
> > than the backbones could sell them a local drop, which would b) be
> > quintuply redundant in cast of feed failure, and c) unload all the
> > cross provider traffic from the NAP's, and indeed, the backbone itself.
>
> That happened here in Columbus with a provider whom I won't name since they
> are very imfamous for threatening legal action at the drop of a hat.  The
> fact of the matter is that they claim to be carrying some ungodly portion
> of the internet traffic on their "private network" thereby providing faster
> connections for their customers.  Well, this is America folks.  Lets face
> it.  If there is opportunity for someone to make a quick buck, they will.
> These guys ended up with DS1's to the big-4, put in an OC3 circuit
> provisioned for a single DS3 to a local ISP that was a partner in the
> project and at the time had a 10MB partial DS3 circuit to one of the big-4
> and advertised their network as "OC3 Fiber Optics based" and "Faster than a
> Teier One".
>
> Lets see how they are performing today, shall we?
>
> [somebox]:~# traceroute customer.of.blah-12345-we-are-a-nap.net
> traceroute: Warning: Multiple interfaces found; using x.x.x.x @ eth0
> traceroute to customer.of.blah-12345-we-are-a-nap.net (y.y.y.y), 30 hops
> max, 40 byte packets
>  1  (default gateway) (x.x.x.1)  1.069 ms  0.454 ms  0.434 ms
>  2  (Tier One provider) (x.x.x.21)  1.456 ms  1.295 ms  1.268 ms
>  3  aads-nap.att.net (198.32.130.60)  42.083 ms  55.715 ms  51.440 ms
>  4  br2-a3110s2.cgcil.ip.att.net (192.205.31.122)  50.639 ms  54.973 ms
> 51.153 ms
>  5  br1-h30.sl9mo.ip.att.net (12.127.15.210)  59.831 ms  51.588 ms  44.678 ms
>  6  ar1-a300s1.sl9mo.ip.att.net (12.127.4.5)  42.652 ms  33.012 ms  35.015 ms
>  7   (y.y.y.y)  50.081 ms  42.371 ms  43.084 ms
>  8  customer.demarc.blah-12345-we-are-a-nap.net (y.y.y.y)  69.753 ms
> 74.542 ms OSPF? (y.y.y.z)  89.058 ms
>  9  router.customer.of.blah-12345-we-are-a-nap.net (y.y.y.y)  92.875 ms
> 87.486 ms  95.569 ms
> 10  www.customer.of.blah-12345-we-are-a-nap.net (y.y.y.y)  86.939 ms
> 58.300 ms  64.930 ms
>
> Wow.  Now, that's some lightning speed. <sic>
>
> And NOW, lets look at someone with a real Tier One provider:
>
> [somebox]:~# traceroute www.mcs.net
> traceroute: Warning: Multiple interfaces found; using x.x.x.x @ eth0
> traceroute to www.mcs.net (205.164.8.12), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
>  1  (Default Gateway) (x.x.x.1)  0.495 ms  0.415 ms  0.385 ms
>  2  (Tier One provider) (x.x.x.21)  2.424 ms  1.630 ms  1.529 ms
>  3  aads.good.net (198.32.130.49)  15.131 ms  13.261 ms  13.930 ms
>  4  mcsnet.chicago.good.net (207.98.189.130)  14.775 ms  15.296 ms  16.193 ms
>  5  www.mcs.net (205.164.8.12)  14.592 ms  14.750 ms  14.504 ms
> [somebox]:~# 
>
>
>
> The Tier one's who want the business will maintain adequate bandwidth for
> their downstreams. Time and time again, people who haven't been interested
> in investing in the facilities to provide Tier One access have cut corners
> to line their pockets at the expence of their downstreams who far too often
> have no clue and accept the poor performance of their circuit as "normal."
>
> BTW: Karl, lightning fast as always to your site.

Lots of this has to do with your constituents.

If you're a dial-only provider, you can afford not to care (much) about 
latency.  You ALWAYS care about packet loss, but latency can go to the dogs
and your customers won't know much about it.

If you serve DS1 customers, its a different ballgame.  Now you HAVE TO
provide good network infrastructure, or people consider your plant to
"suck".

Then again, my background and engineering efforts have been geared towards
the Fortune-50 marketplace and OLTP environments where ANY packet loss or
significant hysteresis in the transport times is considered unacceptable.

We build 'em "a bit different" around here.

--
-- 
Karl Denninger (karl () MCS Net)| MCSNet - Serving Chicagoland and Wisconsin
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