143.228.0.0/16 and house.gov

Thu Oct 2 16:39:19 UTC 2008

Are you saying that the house.gov site is not in a large data center
with direct fiber connectivity along with many of the other large
federal web sites (with alternative hot sites ready to go at a moment's
notice, of course)? As someone who has been to different government data
centers, I can tell you they have huge amounts of data connectivity
there in case of emergency.

For a large site like house.gov, bandwidth should never be an issue. In
this case I highly doubt it was the issue, but instead overloading of
the hardware in place.

Just my $.02...

Mick

-----Original Message-----
From: Joseph S D Yao [mailto:jsdy at center.osis.gov] 
Sent: Thursday, October 02, 2008 11:54 AM
To: Ernie Rubi
Cc: nanog at nanog.org
Subject: Re: 143.228.0.0/16 and house.gov

What makes you thing that .gov's "have" anything at all?  They have to
buy any bandwidth they have (other than strictly internal bandwidth)
from ISP's.  If the IT budget doesn't allow for it, the IT department
can't buy it.  If the projected need is much lower than this surge, then
they would not have budgeted for it.  The USGOV, contrary to some
folks' belief, does not own the Internet.

Some ISP's are able to quickly add bandwidth if the line is set up for
it, but I think the IT department would have had to have an existing
active relationship with the ISP to be able to know whom to ask.

-- 
Joe Yao
Qinetiq NA / Analex Contractor