Is it time for an disruption analysis working group for the Internet?

Thu Nov 12 08:48:58 UTC 1998

Have we reached a critical mass of multi-provider disruptions to make
it possible to do something yet?

Most networked industries have some group which collects and analyzes
information about disruptions.  What's interesting is how often similar
disruptions had precursor events across multiple different service
providers. For example, there have been several cases in the last few
months of root and gtld servers failing to transfer zone files.  And
there have been several cases of routers not withdrawing routes after
an erroneous announcement.  It is only after the major disruption occurs
does the information get shared, usually via the public news media.  Once
upon a time, the IETF had a group called 'netstat,' and NANOG had presentations
about the 'State of the Internet.'  Neither have appeared on the agenda
of those organizations for a variety of reasons recently.

If there was a process for providers to submit initial and final reports
about significant service disruptions; and a group to organize a regular
report of common root causes across multiple providers (not a report card
on any single provider) would any provider voluntarily participate?  I'm
not thinking about a real-time shared trouble ticket system, but something
on the same scale as other industry outage reports to industry working groups.

I suspect I know the answer to that question.

Craig, Randy, Jhawk stop reading here-----------------------------------

On the other hand, suppose instead of being very hard to reach I suddenly
started returning reporters' phone calls promptly and telling them about
this great idea I have to improve the reliability of the Internet.
Eventually one will write a story about it, and maybe even get some
decent coverage.  How high up do I have to shoot in order to get your
CEO's attention?  Does it have to be the front page of the New York Times?

Would that change the answer to the question above?
-- 
Sean Donelan, Data Research Associates, Inc, St. Louis, MO
  Affiliation given for identification not representation