Ungodly packet loss rates

Robert Bowman rob at elite.exodus.net
Mon Oct 21 18:22:27 UTC 1996


The wonderful, and possibly the only redeeming quality of the new commercial
Internet is that it is a free market system.  You have your choice of which
ISP/NSP to connect to as a dial-up user.  Cisco also has a choice as to
which provider to connect to.  If either chooses poorly, you can always seek
out those providers which do not oversell their lines, provide UPS
and power generators in case of failure, which peer openly with all networks,
and offer guaranteed reliability.  Good providers are available for a price.
However, if you are concerned with price, as a lot of users of certain ISPs
are, then I have no pity..  you simply pay what you get for.

Let me stress again.. I seriously doubt this is the appropriate platform for
discussion of which providers are bad..  and therefore..  I'll stop right 
here.

Rob
Exodus Communications Inc.
> 
> [Resent... I stupidly used the wrong address for the NANOG list]
> 
> This is being sent to the "help-line" addresses of several Internet
> providers because they're not providing what I consider appropriate
> service. It's being sent to the NANOG mailing list because it
> represents what I believe to be an industry-wide problem.
> 
> I'm just a lowly end user, and perhaps I shouldn't intrude into the
> councils of the Wise and the Great, but this is just a bit
> ridiculous. Attached is a traceroute from my home machine to the
> system I'm trying to work on over a TELNET session. It looks like
> there's about a 40-percent overall round-trip loss rate, most or all
> of it apparently introduced in the Alternet and BBN Planet backbones.
> This is not a transient condition; it's been going on for at least
> several days, and similar things happen all the time.
> 
> I think we can all agree that a 40-percent loss rate isn't an
> acceptable level of service in an IP network. It's certainly making it
> annoying and frustrating for me to try to work. It's also driving up
> the load on the network by provoking retransmissions. A corporate
> internal network running at that loss rate would probably be considered
> to be in collapse.
> 
> I pay TLGnet (now Best) an agreed-upon amount of money every month,
> nominally in exchange for a reasonable level of Internet service. I
> think that part of TLGnet's obligation under that arrangement is to
> contract for reliable backbone service. Likewise, the other end of the
> path (Cisco systems, for whom I am emphatically not, *not, *NOT*
> speaking here) pays BBN what I suspect to be a very large amount of
> money indeed for DS3 service, presumably in the expectation that most
> of the packets that go into the DS3 will come out of the network
> somewhere. Alternet presumably has agreements with both TLGnet and
> BBN. That puts everybody on the hook.
> 
> I fully understand that it's difficult to provide reliable service in
> an exponentially-growing network. I'm aware that everybody's already
> using the fastest lines they can get, and connecting the fastest
> routers to them. I know that links are being added. I appreciate that
> both lines and equipment are very expensive, and that adding lines
> serves to complicate an already amazingly complex router configuration
> situation. I understand that cash-flow issues (as well as
> convincing-the-bean-counters issues) are involved. I sympathize...
> 
> ... but the fact remains that I'm not getting the level of service I
> think I'm entitled to, nor are other end users. Not only that, but if
> the level of service gets any lower, the Net will become so painful
> to use that I'll start wondering why I bother. While reducing my Net
> use might be good for my mental health, I don't think anybody wants to
> see users abandoning the Net because of poor service.
> 
> So, what's to be done about it? Assuming that all technical means are
> being pursued, and from what I've seen on various mailing lists I
> believe they probably are, the only thing left is a management
> fix. May I make the probably-sacreligous suggestion that the industry
> as a whole, and the providers I've mentioned in particular, show
> greater concern for the quality of service provided, and
> specifically--
> 
>    1. Stop taking on new customers (or other traffic sources) until
>       existing customers can be provided with an appropriate level of
>       service.
> 
>    2. Develop meaningful quality-of-service standards that can be used
>       to guarantee reasonable performance in terms of end-to-end drop
>       rates, delays, and downtime.
> 
>    3. Reexamine both pricing levels and the Internet pricing model, to
>       make sure that there's enough money available to fund a usable
>       level of service.
> 
> Yes, this means giving up some business. That's one of the costs of
> honoring your agreements... and of not alienating an entire generation
> of customers.
> 
> Thank you for your attention. Although I usually scan at least the
> subject lines of messages sent to the NANOG list, I'm temporarily
> without access to the news server on which I ordinarily read the
> list. For the next few days, I won't be able to answer replies not sent
> to me directly.
> 
> 					-- J. Bashinski
> 
> 
> 
> blue% traceroute -a -q 25 -Q champagne.cisco.com
> traceroute to checkpoint-sj.cisco.com (171.69.10.37), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
>  1  tongue.velvet.com (206.14.77.65)  (2.8 ms/3.6 ms(+-0.9 ms)/15.8 ms) 25/25 (100.00%)
>  2  tlg-cust-link.tlg.net (140.174.151.93)  (39.0 ms/47.5 ms(+-10.3 ms)/134.8 ms) 25/25 (100.00%)
>  3  mae-west.tlg.net (198.32.136.22)  (40.7 ms/45.6 ms(+-9.2 ms)/57.0 ms) 25/25 (100.00%)
>  4  905.Hssi3-0.GW1.SCL1.ALTER.NET (137.39.133.89)  (43.9 ms/49.1 ms(+-9.9 ms)/60.8 ms) 25/25 (100.00%)
>  5  Fddi0-0.CR1.SCL1.Alter.Net (137.39.19.5)  (43.5 ms/48.8 ms(+-9.8 ms)/57.0 ms) 25/25 (100.00%)
>  6  Hssi3-0.San-Jose3.CA.Alter.Net (137.39.100.1) * *  (45.3 ms/52.5 ms(+-11.1 ms)/77.6 ms) 23/25 (92.00%)
>  7  Fddi0-0.San-Jose6.CA.Alter.Net (137.39.27.12) *  (44.4 ms/49.6 ms(+-10.2 ms)/60.8 ms) 24/25 (96.00%)
>  8  Hssi1-0.Palo-Alto2.CA.ALTER.NET (137.39.101.162)  (46.7 ms/52.6 ms(+-10.5 ms)/61.6 ms) 25/25 (100.00%)
>  9  Fddi1-0.Palo-Alto3.CA.Alter.Net (137.39.47.7) * * * * *  (57.9 ms/82.0 ms(+-21.6 ms)/248.5 ms) 20/25 (80.00%)
> 10  decwrl.bbnplanet.net (198.32.176.5) * * * * * *  (50.4 ms/60.8 ms(+-14.0 ms)/68.9 ms) 19/25 (76.00%)
> 11  paloalto-br1.bbnplanet.net (4.0.1.57) * * * * * *  (52.7 ms/63.6 ms(+-14.7 ms)/82.3 ms) 19/25 (76.00%)
> 12  paloalto-cisco.bbnplanet.net (131.119.0.196) * * * * * * *  (57.0 ms/66.2 ms(+-15.7 ms)/80.7 ms) 18/25 (72.00%)
> 13  * 131.119.26.10 (131.119.26.10) * * * * *  (54.8 ms/65.6 ms(+-15.1 ms)/75.6 ms) 19/25 (76.00%)
> 14  sj-wall-2.cisco.com (192.31.7.34) * * * * *  (48.2 ms/77.2 ms(+-18.4 ms)/151.9 ms) 20/25 (80.00%)
> 15  * * * * * sj-eng-corp2.cisco.com (198.92.1.130) * * * * *  (58.5 ms/70.3 ms(+-18.2 ms)/81.2 ms) 15/25 (60.00%)
> 16  * eng-atm-gw2.cisco.com (171.69.4.129) * * * * * * * * *  (61.9 ms/67.1 ms(+-17.4 ms)/78.7 ms) 15/25 (60.00%)
> 17  sj-eng-corp1.cisco.com (171.69.5.10) * * * * * * *  (52.2 ms/64.9 ms(+-15.4 ms)/81.8 ms) 18/25 (72.00%)
> 18  checkpoint-sj.cisco.com (171.69.10.37) * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *  (58.1 ms/78.6 ms(+-30.0 ms)/202.2 ms) 9/25 (36.00%)
> 






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