Re: The Gorgon's Knot. Was: Re: Verio Peering Question

[Sean Donelan <sean () donelan com>]

On Fri, 28 Sep 2001, Vadim Antonov wrote:
> The reason for being very sensitive about routing tables was that ICM part
> of things had quite arcane routing policies; and ability of AS1800
boxes
> to process updates in a timely fashion was quite vital for keeping
> US-Europe Internet connectivity up and running.

Yeah, I know.  Sometimes Sprint ICM was part of Sprint, other times it
was that "other" network Sprint just happened to manage.

> Marketing at that time was so clueless about Internet that they couldn't
> even pronounce "routing filter", and definitely couldn't make a marketing
> blitz out of it.

Sprint kept the filters on for years afterwards.  It may have taken
the clueless salespeople a few years, but they eventually did figure out
how to recite the magic words "buy your circuit from sprint and you
won't have problems with filters" was a way to win a sale.  And who
could forget the popular "Don't buy a circuit from small ISP, because
they won't be able to get past the Internet filters."  I went through
a half-dozen Sprint sales people in different parts of the country,
and by 1996 or so they all had the spiel down pat.

I know, I should have taped their sales calls.