Access to the Internic Blocked

Wed Aug 21 15:16:59 UTC 1996

On Wed, 21 Aug 1996, Enke Chen wrote:

> > You forgot to point out that his evidence below indicates that this is 
> > an MCI problem in Washington. Besides the fact that Network Solutions
> > isn't anyone's provider...
> 
> Let us be more careful here. The traceroute only indicates that the 
> problem was with the hop after border7.wtn.mci.net. The traceroute 
> simply does not contain sufficient information to pinpoint which 
> party the next hop is.  

Very true. That fact and the widespread use of assymetric return paths (as
in this case) really makes it impossible to authoritatively diagnose who
is at fault when a routing problem occurs merely by reading a few
traceroutes.

One thing that would help diagnose the true source of the problem with
less human interaction required (avoiding voicemail and all that) would be
wider public access to traceroutes beginning at key sites. There is a
group of ISP's who make CGI-based traceroutes available from their sites
at http://amazing.netaxs.com/internet/club-traceroute.html

In this instance, it would have helped if the Internic had a CGI
traceroute available from their site but I think it would also be a nice
thing if the major NSP's would make this same kind of facility available
from their exchange points.

What do you folks think?

Michael Dillon                   -               ISP & Internet Consulting
Memra Software Inc.              -                  Fax: +1-604-546-3049
http://www.memra.com             -               E-mail: michael at memra.com