Re: Westnet and Utah outage

[Avi Freedman <freedman () netaxs com>]

> > These kind of performances are ways too regular for me these days. And
> > as a "user" I have very little means to find out what the hell is wrong
> > with this network. I am sometimes so sick and tired of this that I am
> > tempted to use the tools I have (ping and traceroute) and broadly post
> > to people as to where things seem broken. And I will not care at all if
> > you guys tell me "well, that's unfair, as ping and traceroute go to
> > the main processor." Give me a working network, better tools, or SHUT
> > THE HELL UP AND GO BACK TO FARMING. I will be glad to shut up myself,
> > once you get your act together and provide smooth and transparent
> > network services.

Well, it's not terribly useful to complain to nanog about specific &
temporary problems.  Unfortunately, it's often really only the Network 
Operation Centers (NOCs) of the various providers who are equipped with the 
knowledge of the topology of the various networks who can properly diagnose
network problems.

[So it's not a problem to use ping & traceroute - acknowledging that they
 may not be useful when seeing round trip times from (Cisco) routers.  The
 problem is that you should pick a productive forum such as your provider's
 NOC to complain to.]

For example, it's easy to say "My provider sucked this morning - my
traceroute stopped in DC and there were huge packet losses".  But what
you don't see is that the AC power was *off* @ MAE-East this morning
from 4am or so until 9:30am or so.  And mailing to NANOG is not the
right way to find out these things.

Avi