NYC FIBER CUT

Fri May 21 20:13:46 UTC 1999

alan at globalcenter.NET (Alan Hannan) writes:
>  However, for those who have subscribed to nanog for more than 3
>  years, nanog has traditionally been useful to discuss operational
>  issues, where issue is defined as a concept or problem.  
>
>  Real time issues are generally helped little by nanog discussions.

I agree 100%.  Unfortunately, unlike Alan, I've found nanog discussions
are very good at fixing 'real time issues' and not so good at fixing
long-term operational issues.  

Carriers should be the ones who first notify their customers about problems.
In theory, there should be no way I could know and post about a problem
before a carrier monitoring its own facilities.  Likewise, reporting a
routing loop problem to a carrier should result in its repair without the
need to post about it on a public mailing list.  After all, it affects
them whether reported by a customer or a non-customer.

Most of the reasons why I post problems have their root-causes in some
very old operational problems.  Heck, the routing loop Alan mentioned seems
to have been aggravated by a Cisco IOS bug (or at least similar to a bug)
dating back to the days when Alan was still a network tech in Nebraska.

How about this as a long-term operational issue, defined as a concept
or problem: why are we still discussing the same issues three years
later?  What makes them so difficult to fix?
-- 
Sean Donelan, Data Research Associates, Inc, St. Louis, MO
  Affiliation given for identification not representation