NOC communications

Mon Jul 13 18:12:14 UTC 1998

>Having a different number/email address on your AS than what's on your
>domain name might solve some of these problems- it might not.  Being much
>more aggressive and outwardly unfriendly to people who call the number on
>your AS records becomes realistic if you have distinctly declared it for
>NOC communications only.

Please define "NOC communications only."  Are Smurf reports considered
NOC communications. How about Spam reports, spoofing addresses, or 
web pages being down? How about "I can't get through (i.e. I didn't want
to wait) to your regular number so I called this one."

Fact of the matter is every piece of contact information I have listed
in ARIN's database or on a public web page has ended up on a junk
mailing/calling list.  The contact information which I only give
out directly to other NOCs has NEVER been abused.

Perhaps we should ask GTE Superpages, UUNET telemarketing, and Bull's Eye
Target E-mail why do they use these particular set of contacts for
their marketing efforts?

>I disagree with your point that NOC-to-NOC communications should ever be
>forwarded to a general number, even with adequate training.

Is there a Turing test for contact information?  There are organizations
with extremely good communication operations which provide even better
service than calling your favorite NOC engineer directly.  Unfortunately
they are rare, and as you pointed out, tend to only last as long as
the next re-organization plan.

>My point exactly - we all have proof that the current system doesn't work
>very well.

If it doesn't affect the share price, it seems like the management of most
major ISPs could care less.  This is, was, and always will be a management
problem.  We can come up with all the clever technical ideas to try to
address reasons management gives for not doing something.  But until
some clever analysist decides this is an issue that can affect earnings,
e.g. the Y2000 issue, not much is going to happen.

>We already have a central authority that collects two perfectly good points
>of information about each AS in North America (supposedly.)

Yeah, right.  

   Dear Sprint, Vab is gone.  Since you have not updated your contact
   information in a prompt fashion, your AS numbers will be withdrawn
   at Midnight.  Have a nice day.

As far as most provider's are concerned there is no penalty for having
out of date or bogus contact information.  They view it as just one more
added cost, and something that only benefits their competitors and not
themselves.  That is until they read about themselves on the front-page
of the New York Times.  Then the managers start yelling at the engineers
"Why didn't you tell us it was a problem."

Well, I think I've flogged this dead horse enough this time.  Maybe
we can have this discussion again in another six months.
-- 
Sean Donelan, Data Research Associates, Inc, St. Louis, MO
  Affiliation given for identification not representation