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A little more on the Internet changes (fwd)


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Robb Kambic                                Unidata Program Center
Software Engineer III                      Univ. Corp for Atmospheric Research
address@hidden             WWW: http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/
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---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 8 Jun 2000 23:30:24 -0500 (CDT)
From: Gilbert Sebenste <address@hidden>
To: address@hidden
Subject: A little more on the Internet changes

Actually, after sending an email to Dan Vietor, I *do* remember that there
were upcoming changes to the Internet routes.

I had put in a trouble ticket to NIU's ISP, Genuity (formerly BBNPLANET,
BBN, and GTE Internetworking) about MAE-East being excessively clogged
(for you non-Internet gurus there, all major ISP's connect with each other
there) about a month ago. Of course, the problem, as many of you know, is
that the traffic through that hub is incredible. And in the last few
months, once again, MAE-EAST is saturating during "normal business hours".
Genuity said that a fix was coming, be patient, we don't know when it's
going to be kind-of-thing. We know now.

Now, Dallas and other hubs are somehow being used to route traffic more
efficiently instead of always going through MAE-EAST. For example, up
until 2 days ago, to connect to a McIDAS ADDE server at UNIDATA, it took
*22* hops. It started at NIU, went to Chicago, then through Virginia,
MAE-EAST, back to Chicago through Qwest, then to Kansas City...arrrgh.
Now, it goes from Chicago to Dallas, hits Qwest there, then Houston, then
back to Dallas (I'm sure Qwest is working on that), and then to
Denver. Even with that loop, it's now much faster to UNIDATA/UCAR. And,
when I try to get data from a site in North Carolina, I go through Dallas,
and then Atlanta, before I hit Virginia and drop to North Carolina. Still
kinda round-about, but I bypass MAE-EAST. And it makes all the difference
in the world.

Last weekend, Verio did some major reworking, as well as Sprint to some
degree, and over the last 48-72 hours, Genuity is also doing it in broad
daylight during the week. Sprint will complete their changes this weekend
(see http://www.sprint.net/maint/).

In all this, as I described with Qwest, loops and messed are occurring
while paths are changed and figured out. It has helped most ISP's
dramatically. The best one to benefit by far was Verio, which now
connects/peers with UUNET/ALTER.NET in several locations. Now, I can
traceroute to the College of Dupage during the daytime in 10 ms, until I
hit the school itself (which slows it down massively due to their
horribly saturated connection).

Summer is the time to lay fiber optic cable, and I see it happening
everywhere in the 'burbs. My guess is that things will continue to change
for the better, as all the major ISP's add more bandwidth. Until then,
call up your ISP and see if they messed something up, which happened to
one college I know (and they really messed it up!). For now, patience is
the key. And ask your school to get more bandwidth if they can, if you're
not on the VBNS. I wished my school had listened to me and others when we
could have gotten on that free (through a grant). Oh well.

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Gilbert Sebenste                                                     ********
Internet: address@hidden    (My opinions only!)                     ******
Staff Meteorologist, Northern Illinois University                      ****
E-mail: address@hidden                                 ***
web: http://weather.admin.niu.edu                                      **
Work phone: 815-753-5492                                                *
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