RE: BGP instability (was Re: Exodus Down)

[Sean Donelan <sean () donelan com>]

On Sat, 23 June 2001, "Vivien M." wrote:
> > According to Exodus' trouble ticket it is a BGP instability between
> > several locations in their network and with BGP customers.
>
> Hmmmmm... You somehow found a way to get this information without agreeing
> to the NDA? Impressive. (For the people around here who aren't Exodus
> customers: subscribing to their network engineering/outage list
> theoretically implies agreeing to an NDA, which is presumably why no one
> here mentioned this)

I'm not subscribed to Exodus's network engineering mailing list, nor
have I agreed to a NDA with Exodus about their outage information.

Trying to apply an NDA to outage information has always struck me as
a bit stupid.  After all, NDA or not, people know you had an outage,
what they don't know is your explanation why it happened.  As we've
seen, when there is a lack of good information, people will make up
stories to fit.

AT&T, with over 100 years experience of handling outages, seems to have
thought out their policy better than some of the newer communication
companies.  AT&T doesn't go out of its way to advertise problems, but
as far as I can tell, AT&T doesn't try to prevent its customers from
telling other people about their experience with AT&T, good or bad.

Think of it like a movie studio who only lets movie critics who agree to
write good things about their movie see the movie.

Whether this is "the" problem affecting Slashdot, a contributing factor,
or unrelated, I do not know.  Verizon also had DACS problems in Boston
affecting circuits in the area. I believe Slashdot is located in the
Boston area. And, of course, Slashdot has problems on a regular basis
even when the network is working.