Internet operations during pandemics

Mon Mar 23 21:50:20 UTC 2020

On Thu, Mar 19, 2020 at 1:47 PM Seth Mattinen <sethm at rollernet.us> wrote:
>
> On 3/19/20 9:51 AM, Christopher Morrow wrote:
> > During this time, however, 'work from home' technology hasn't really
> > progressed along the same path, has it? So, "get to the vpn" is still
> > largely a process of getting packets across the wide internet and to
> > small locations (your enterprise), there's little relief in site for
> > that model:(
>
>
> IMO that's where local peering comes in, but the big ISPs like AT&T and
> Charter/Spectrum (the two national providers in my area) are loathe to
> peer anywhere except a few big central locations, if at all. It's not a

peer or transit? or did you mean crossing between att/comcast ?
(assume they are SFP not customer/transit)

> technical problem (i.e. Charter has a 10% utilized 10Ge and unused 1Ge
> switch trunks in my facility as custs cancel due to he.net moving in),
> it's a policy problem.

I expect charter (in your example) would happily sign you up to a 1g
or 10g port that's vacated there, right?
the difference/question is about 'settlement free' or 'less than
standard transit' access?

> So we end up with setups like colo customers not using Charter at the
> colo because they can get better pricing options, then suddenly they
> have remote workers on high latency cable connections at home since for
> that home cable connection to talk to the colo server traffic has to
> take some crazy long out of state boomerang path that a simple peering
> connection would solve.

yea, this is exactly the sort of problem I was thinking about...
I wonder if enterprises pulling their VPN from 'on prem' to 'deploy in
"equinix" (pick your xerox copy of same)' with a private network
backhaul to their prem(s) might actually make things better? Might
that allow them to deploy more servers more easily? (ship to "equinix"
ask remote hands to deploy...)

That and some reasonable answer for 'connect to the IX, get some local
peering to networks where your employees are...' etc.