I don't want to sound like the fly that was doing the elephant and asked,
"Does this hurt?" But...
NSF (the organization, the building, and not the networking division) in
its infinite wisdom decided to change ISPs from SURANET (bbn Planet) to
PSInet. The Computer and Information Science and Engineering Directorate,
to which our networking division belongs, has its own "high-speed LAN"
(HSL). NSF, the building, has still not changed over its connection to
PSInet, but our HSL has. The building is apparently not going to switch
over until it gets its firewall on-line. So, to get to color printers and
other organizational resources, our packets go through PSInet via MAE-E and
back via SURA/bbn (MCI circuits) to the main LANs. Yesterday was a very
busy day, shipping scads of graphics files to the color printers getting
ready for big presentation schedule.
Did it hurt?
--SG