Ungodly packet loss rates

Mon Oct 21 21:50:54 UTC 1996

On Mon, 21 Oct 1996 jbash at velvet.com wrote:
> My point is that I should be able to expect better than a 40-percent
> loss rate to *any* point on the Net, at *any* time, from *any*
> provider. In fact, I think I should be able to expect less than 5
> percent, and probably less than 1 percent. 

Honestly, here I think you're smoking something.  Whatever it is, it
must be REAL good.

(And from a coworker, a fellow sysadmin:
  "There is something to be said for the idiot; if the world was
   void of idiots, how then would *we* look?"
  How in the hell can you expect a 100% success rate over (1) a slow
  modem link, and (2) to *ANY* site on the world.  Hell, do you have
  any *CLUE*--I know you don't--how many sites on the net have servers
  behind 28.8 links???  How great a packet loss do you expect when you
  access them??  Is that provider dependent???  *ANY* site--really?
 - mikedoug at texas.net -
   Michael Douglass     )

> Back when I actually
> touched routers, I used to recommend that people upgrade their
> internal networks when loss rates hit 1 percent.

Do you have a clue?  Due to the structure of the Internet, you
are *going* to have loss.  It's inherent in the design of the
system, and unavoidable.  And for people upgrading their internal
networks when packet loss hit 1%, woah, sounds like you must
work in Sales.

> A situation where I have to "shop around" for connectivity depending
> on what site I want to talk to that day is just plain unacceptable.

No, I beleive the person who recommended that suggested you shop around
for the best provider *to start out with*, not bitch, whine, and moan
when your connection is not 100% perfect through the one you 
currently have.

> It doesn't look to me as though the loss is being introduced at the
> NAPS. If you look at the trace, you'll see that significant loss
> starts to appear within Alternet, well after MAE-west. It looks as
> though more loss appears inside BBN's network, although it's difficult
> to tell because of the already large Alternet loss.

Traceroute is *not* a good tool to diagnose packet loss problems.
I've had traceroute tell me that a packet loss problem was between
two points 3-4 hops "out", when actually it was with the T-1 at 
my site, the "first hop" in the trace.

> Thanks for the suggestion, but I work for Cisco, so ordinarily I have
> a Frame Relay connectivity into Cisco's network. This week the
> computer I usually use for work is in for service. The Cisco LAN at my
> house is air-gapped from the personal LAN, and it would be a real pain
> to reconfigure everything, so for the moment I'm coming in to Cisco
> over the Net, using my personal service. It's purely temporary. If
> I did interactive work under these conditions on a regular basis, I'd
> have gone insane long ago.

I dont see where a temporary network problem such as you describe should
result in a message being sent to the various ISPs and the NANOG list.
My suggestion:  quit bitching and wait for your FR connection to be
restored, or reconfigure your current equipment (if you work at Cisco,
it shouldn't be TOO hard).

 __________________________________________________________________
| bill bradford     | system administrator, unix geek, and BOFH    |
| mrbill at texas.net  | texas networking, inc. http://www.texas.net  |
| mrbill at mrbill.net | 210-272-8111 * 512-472-2532                  |
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| speak for my company?  hell, I heardly speak for myself          |
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