ATT <-> Broadwing (Level3) Congestion

Jerry Pasker jerry at jerry.org
Wed May 16 17:56:22 UTC 2007


>Is anyone else seeing significant congestion between ATT and 
>Broadwing in Dallas/Fort Worth?
>
>-brandon

I have no idea if the following is related: (and frankly, I don't 
care, for anyone that wants to flame me on it)  ;-)

I was seeing it between Qwest and Level 3 since about November(!!!), 
on and off.   And getting worse over the months.  You know it's bad 
when residential customers send traceroutes and ping summaries saying 
"Um, 6 hops out, Qwest is broken in Dallas."   When I would call 
Qwest on it, I would get one clueless in-duh-vidual after another. 
Eventually, I did get a cluefull chap who summed it up with "Yeah, 
that's a big political finger pointing debacle."  He wouldn't comment 
further, and I don't blame him.

(Sidebar... it's funny that as a PAYING CUSTOMER I have to talk to 
the front line support doofs... if I were a NON-PAYING CUSTOMER 
(peer) with them, I'd get to talk to some cluefull NOC person that 
knows what the phrase "IP transit" means.)

A week ago,  admin downed my BGP session with Qwest.  Life was 
instantly 100% better.

Maybe it was Qwest's fault.  Or Maybe it Level3's fault the whole 
time.  I don't care who's fault it is.... L3 or Qwest, or the man on 
the moon.....As far as I'm concerned, when two large NSPs can't get a 
peering arrangement to not have packet loss, they both suck equally, 
because they're both being equally STUPID in not solving the problem. 
It's not like they can't afford to upgrade something.  If it's really 
that big of a deal, down the peering session!  Transit  the traffic 
on your own backbones to a peering session somewhere else!  Idiots! 
Argh!!

In this case, by firing Qwest, I had the ability to punish stupid. 
And it felt good.  Because over the months, my customers have done 
the same to me by leaving due to crappy performance.

This week, I'm no longer a Qwest transit customer.  And I'm sleeping 
better at night, and my family life is even better.  Life's good!

Just my two cents.




More information about the NANOG mailing list