Pinging routers for network status

[Sean Donelan <sean () donelan com>]

On Sun, 17 December 2000, John Fraizer wrote:
> On Sat, 16 Dec 2000 nanog () rmrf net wrote:
> > We at SAVVIS run continous pings to every backbone router that we
> > own.  (John - this does not include our ATM switches, we have no way to
> > monitor latency between them).  But if, say, our connection to Sprint or
>
> Um, sure you do.  You know your atm mesh and (hopefully) you have an IP
> address bound up on the switch itself so you can gather snmp statistics
> from the box.

Most network providers ping their routers for network status.  Several
providers even track RTT to detect changes.  But very few customers
connect to routers.  Comparing the performance you see with HP Openview
or similar products with the performance customers see remains an
interesting question.  Sometimes C&W's or AT&T's traffic web site does
show a problem.  But there are also problems that don't show up in
intra-network pings.  In particular IGP/BGP routing issues can result
in severe access network problems, but no problem with the internal
provider network mesh used for pings.