Advice on dealing with Sprint

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1

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

2

Jon Green writes:

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.

You are actually getting some misinformation. You can use any router
you want, we just can't help you configure things other than Cisco
routers. If you want us to manage your router, then it must be a
Cisco, otherwise use whatever you want.

Any suggestions welcome. Anyone from Sprint who'd like to comment, please
do so.

Tell your Sprint sales folks that I said it was fine and approve the
SCA. If they have any questions, have them call me.

-Hank Kilmer
Mgr Sprint IP OPS Engineering

3

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.