Re: MAE-East - Operational question

[Jeff Barrows <jsb () UU NET>]

 Alex -

  When I have seen packet loss between two providers peering
  across the various shared medium FDDI interconnects, it has
  almost always been due to one or more of the following 
  situations :

   - Network A has congested pipe(s) into the L2 thing.
   - Network B has congested pipe(s) into the L2 thing.
   - Network A has congested pipe(s) to the rest of
     their network.
   - Network B has congested pipe(s) to the rest of
     their network.
   - The peering session between Network A and Network B
     is traversing the network of FDDI switches at the IX,
     as the networks are not peering across a FDDI switch
     that they have in common, and the links are congested.

  The above situations are mostly correctable, assuming :

   - Additional FDDI ports are available.
   - Additional capacity to their network is obtainable.

  Other things one can do :

   - FD-FDDI
   - Peering session can be moved to a FDDI switch that
     the two networks have in common.

  Don't get me wrong-- certainly one should explore means
  of interconnecting beyond the shared medium FDDI option.
  The various ATM public peering services seem a viable
  way of scaling public peering as it exists today... while
  also affording a network the opportunity to put "private
  [atm-vc] peering" on their marketing web pages. ;)

  This is my personal observation- hope it helps.

 - jsb


> Does anyone care about trying to get packet loss over MAE-East reduced
> any more? Some peers have quite heavy packet loss to them from where
> I'm sitting, and have done for a good while. It seems to me it's
> not a problem with my port, and I don't think I have head of line blocking
> problems, which means it's either a Gigaswitch problem, or their ports
> are simply full. Does anyone still hassle Worldcom and peers about this
> or have we lost hope of ever getting it fixed (i.e. people peer privately
> or hope other exchange points or a replacement will come along).
>
> -- 
> Alex Bligh
> GX Networks (formerly Xara Networks)