UUNET service

Fri Apr 12 20:48:33 UTC 2002

A thought-provoking issue to be sure, but it is already chronicled
in the Archives of NANOG.

> Also sprach jlewis at lewis.org
> >To me, that looks more like an outage (now fixed) on a customer
> >network.  The 'loop' between 500.Serial2-11.GW4.BWI1.ALTER.NET and
> >core62007-gw.customer.alter.net, could likely be caused by UU's
> >customer advertising an aggregate route to UU, but not 
> actually having
> >a route to the IP...so they default back to UU, and UU sends 
> it back to
> >the customer.
> 
> That was my thought when I saw the (mangled) traceroute.
> 
> >This was likely a problem on the customer's network, so why should
> >UUNet take a trouble report from you?
> 
> This is a really crappy attitude...but its one I hear from a lot of
> Internet providers, and that I frequently hear from telco's 
> too.  I make
> the argument that its *not* in the provider's best interest 
> to take this
> attitude.
> 
> Basically, what you are saying is that you really don't care of your
> network actually *works* or not.
> 
> I'll take a credible trouble report about my network from 
> anyone.  (Note
> the use of the term "credible" there)  If my network is operating in
> some sub-standard way, I want to know about it, and I don't care of I
> find out about it from a customer or from some random person halfway
> around the globe.
> 
> To be quite honest, the mindset of "You're not our customer, I won't
> take your report about our network being screwed up," boggles my mind.
> 
> Like I said...I get the same attitude from telco's (particularly
> BellSouth that I deal with a lot), and it blows my mind.  
> BellSouth has
> *NO* way for me, as someone that deals with the PSTN a *LOT*, and has
> the ability to correlate reports of problems and determine where there
> are likely significant problems, to report problems to them 
> because "I'm
> not the customer."  They would rather calls not be completely 
> than to be
> pointed to where their network is broken by a non-customer.  Where is
> the logic in that?  The most recent example of this was that we were
> having customer from 2 CO's (actually, one CO and one remote node off
> that CO) that were unable to complete ISDN data calls to us.  It took
> BellSouth over 3 days to fix this when they could've had it fixed in
> less than 2 hours if they had just taken my trouble report.
> 
> I can even extend this to equipment vendors.  I've had more than one
> equipment vendor that refused to take a bug report from me (even a
> blatent security vulnerability in one case!) because I didn't have a
> support contract.
> 
> *blink*
> 
> I'm doing your work for you, and you refuse to accept my gift of my
> troubleshooting time and effort.
> 
> 
> So...in this case with uu.net.  Take the report, it takes about 2
> seconds to come to the conclusion that we have here.  That being, this
> is likely a customer with a default pointed back...nothing we can do
> about.  Then you dump the report in the circular file and go 
> about your
> merry way.
> -- 
> Jeff McAdams                            Email: jeffm at iglou.com
> Head Network Administrator              Voice: (502) 966-3848
> IgLou Internet Services                        (800) 436-4456
> 