NAP/ISP Saturation WAS: Re: Exchanges that matter...

Mon Dec 16 06:46:33 UTC 1996

I've recently been on a hunt - I'm currently on a contract in the Bay 
Area, but I am still doing some sysadmin for an ISP back in montana.

The Montana ISP is Sprint connected.  For my local connection in Hayward, 
CA, I signed up with PACbell, figuring that it would do until I found 
another provider.  After two months I had had enough and went on a quest 
for another provider.

What I discovered is that If I did an extended ping to any provider in my 
local calling area, I had at least 5% packet loss (the provider I am 
using right now was at 5%).  Pacbell was around 50%.  Others varied.  By 
contrast, I can ping any sprint-customer-attached computer and have 
almost 0% packet loss (1 out of 1000 lost occassionaly).  Unfortunately I 
couldn't find a local provider which was spirnt connected.  (An aside: 
anyone who knows  a local priver in hayward which is sprint-connected is 
more than welcome to contact me directly :)

>From traceroutes and additional extended pings, I could tell that some of 
the loss was at exchange points - other times the loss was in internal 
networks.

IS there a reason that I'm getting 5 - 50% loss outside of sprint?  I've 
also played a bit with this from a couple of other providers with similar 
results.

As much as I hate to say anything nice about sprint, I'd have to say that 
they're very good about not loosing packets, at least when they're BGP 
hasn't imploded.

-forrestc at imach.com