COVID-19 vs. our Networks

Mike Bolitho mikebolitho at gmail.com
Tue Mar 17 17:46:38 UTC 2020


>You're facing essentially the same issue as many in non-healthcare do ;
how to best talk to applications in Magic Cloud Land. Reaching the major
cloud providers does not require DIA ; they all have presences on the major
IXes, and direct peering could be an option too depending on your needs and
traffic.

I totally agree and 99.999% of the time, congestion on the Internet is a
nuisance, not a critical problem. I'm not sitting here complaining that my
public internet circuits don't have SLAs or that we run into some packet
loss and latency here and there under normal operations. That's obviously
to be expected. But this whole topic is around what to do when a once in a
lifetime pandemic hits and we're faced with unseen levels of congestion
across the country's infrastructure. I mean the thread is titled COVID-19
Vs Our Networks. That's why I brought up the possible application of TSP to
tell some of the big CDNs that maybe they should limit 4K streaming or big
DLCs during a pandemic. That's it. And yet I'm getting chastised (not
necessarily by you) for suggesting that hospitals, governments, water
treatment plants, power plants, first responders, etc are actually more
important during times like this.

- Mike Bolitho


On Tue, Mar 17, 2020 at 10:35 AM Tom Beecher <beecher at beecher.cc> wrote:

> You're facing essentially the same issue as many in non-healthcare do ;
> how to best talk to applications in Magic Cloud Land. Reaching the major
> cloud providers does not require DIA ; they all have presences on the major
> IXes, and direct peering could be an option too depending on your needs and
> traffic.
>
> I don't mean to be dismissive of the issues you face, I apologize if
> that's how it comes off. What you describe is certainly challenging, but I
> think that you will have better success with some of the options that are
> out there already than hoping for any resolution of intermittent congestion
> issues in the wild west of the DFZ.
>
> On Tue, Mar 17, 2020 at 1:03 PM Mike Bolitho <mikebolitho at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> >The answer is don't shove application traffic that has tight service
>> level requirements onto the public internet at large and expect the same
>> performance as private circuits or other SLA protected services.
>>
>> I keep seeing this over and over again in this long thread. What's your
>> suggestion? How does a hospital, with dozens of third party
>> applications/devices across multiple cloud platforms do this?
>>
>> We have two redundant private lines out of each hospital connecting back
>> to primary and DR DCs and a metro connecting everything together in each
>> region. But for things we do not own that are not hosted locally, what are
>> we supposed to do? We have to go out DIA to get there. Everything we own is
>> connected via fully SLAed private lines. We have zero issues there. I think
>> people vastly underestimate just how much in the healthcare vertical is
>> outside of a medical providers control/ownership.
>>
>> - Mike Bolitho
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Mar 17, 2020 at 9:54 AM Tom Beecher <beecher at beecher.cc> wrote:
>>
>>> The answer is don't shove application traffic that has tight service
>>> level requirements onto the public internet at large and expect the same
>>> performance as private circuits or other SLA protected services.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tue, Mar 17, 2020 at 11:40 AM Mike Bolitho <mikebolitho at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> If an x-ray machine won't work because the Internet is down, I'm not sure
>>>>> that is responsible. As inefficient as it may be to have a license server
>>>>> on-prem if there is an option to check against one in the public cloud,
>>>>> for a medical use-case, that would make more sense to me.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Totally agree with you. Unfortunately it's not a problem with the
>>>> medical providers, it's a problem with the medical devices. Anybody who
>>>> works in the healthcare vertical will tell you just how bad medical devices
>>>> are to work with from an IT perspective. And that is part of my
>>>> original comments.
>>>>
>>>> In your case, I am not sure I have an answer for you, unfortunately.
>>>>> The public Internet is what it is, mostly best-effort. Your applications
>>>>> and use-cases certainly deserve better than that. I'm not sure how to
>>>>> achieve that as your industry shoves more and more activity into the public
>>>>> Internet domain, for one reason or another.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I don't know what it's going to take either. A general shift in
>>>> mentality from the vendors we use I guess. I'm not sure how you get a bunch
>>>> of medical providers to tell these companies they need to fix their stuff.
>>>> You can't exactly use your wallet to force change either. There are only a
>>>> handful of vendor options out there so there isn't a ton of choice. It's
>>>> not like you can buy one of 50 different models of CT machines or EHR
>>>> systems.
>>>>
>>>> Generally speaking it's not an issue. It's just in crazy times like
>>>> these where, if congestion on the public internet gets too crazy, that
>>>> certain platforms might need to be deemed "unnecessary". Is playing
>>>> Fortnight a right? Is streaming a movie in 4K a right? In cases like San
>>>> Francisco they have decided that leaving your home for anything other than
>>>> work or medical care is no longer a right because you're now infringing on
>>>> other's rights by potentially getting them sick. Maybe 4K Netflix fits into
>>>> that category if you're causing problems for first responders and hospitals
>>>> trying to save lives.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> - Mike Bolitho
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Tue, Mar 17, 2020 at 2:22 AM Mark Tinka <mark.tinka at seacom.mu>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On 16/Mar/20 16:54, Carsten Bormann wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> > I recently had to reschedule an X-ray because the license manager
>>>>> for the X-ray machine was acting up.  I don’t think people have a grasp for
>>>>> how much of the medical infrastructure no longer works when the Internet is
>>>>> down.
>>>>>
>>>>> I get this, to some extent. But also, there is a reason hospitals,
>>>>> airports and military installations are either put on special power
>>>>> grids or invest plenty of money in backup power.
>>>>>
>>>>> If an x-ray machine won't work because the Internet is down, I'm not
>>>>> sure that is responsible. As inefficient as it may be to have a license
>>>>> server on-prem if there is an option to check against one in the public
>>>>> cloud, for a medical use-case, that would make more sense to me.
>>>>>
>>>>> Mark.
>>>>>
>>>>
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