Re: Advice on dealing with Sprint

[Tom Eastgard <eastgard () nwnet net>]

Were I in your shoes, I would go back to Bay.  It's certainly in their 
interests to use their corporate weight to get more of an audience with 
Sprint, and / or resolve any problems Sprint has with their box.

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Tom N. Eastgard, Mgr                            Ph: 206/649-7414
Network Engineering                             email: eastgard () nwnet net
NorthWestNet                                    Pager: 206/917-0647

On Wed, 25 Sep 1996, Jon Green wrote:

> Hi folks-
>
> I have a problem that I need some advice on, and figured this was a good place
> to turn.  We are attempting to connect a T1 to Sprint in order to multi-home
> our network.  Currently we are connected to multiple points on MCI's backbone,
> and have just installed a T1 to UUnet.  We heard back from Sprint today..
> they are rejecting us as a customer because we do not use Cisco routers.
> Apparently they feel that Bay Networks routers are not capable of routing
> Internet traffic, ignoring the fact that they already peer with ANS and
> several other providers using Bay routers.
>
> OK, Cisco bigots (hi Craig!), quit laughing at me for a second and give me
> some help here.  Is there any technical justification for what Sprint is
> telling me?  I have downstream customers using Bay, Cisco, HP, 3com, 
> Compatible Systems, and even Proteon routers.  All of them are able to
> connect with me just fine.  I've been running BGP4 peering with MCI for
> over a year now, it also works fine.  I can't find a single valid reason
> that Sprint should even need to "approve" my router vendor, except that
> some short-sighted engineer at Sprint doesn't understand that we live in
> a multi-vendor world.  I'm obviously not going to force Sprint to accept
> my money, but this screws up a lot of the plans we have made in building 
> our network.
>
> Any suggestions welcome.  Anyone from Sprint who'd like to comment, please
> do so.
>
> -Jon
>
>
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