David,
I respect your approach, letting us know about your bandwidth study and what each network operator can expect. The important part is that we get the opportunity to either opt-out, or find out a way to "opt-in" and help you acquire more information to complete your research.
Too bad Digital Isle didn't follow the same approach.
Regards,
Christopher J. Wolff, CTO
Broadband Laboratories
<rant>
Digital Island is certainly not alone in their practice of
assuming an opt-in stance.
When Caida started their ping-a-thons, our IDS went absolutely
bonkers, since they were sending pings from several hosts (3 IIRC) once an
hour - if the target host responded, or a dozen (approx) per hour for
each host that didn't respond. This may not sound like a lot, but at the
time we were ISDN connected, so all traffic was being looked at pretty
closely. After requesting an explanation from the originating network, we
recieved a very polite reply explaining what they were doing, and asking
permission to continue (and for us to open firewall holes so that the
probes could get through). We did in fact feel this was a good use of our
precious limited resources, and allowed it to both continue and go through
our doors. Still, it rankled that nobody bothered to ask first if this
was something we'd mind.
Caida has grown, and so have we: they are now probing from
(IIRC) 18 different hosts, and we are now connected with big fat pipes and
don't freak at a few thousand "extra" packets per hour, but...
We see a new player in the "probes are cool cause we
assume you don't mind" game every couple of months. And to be frank, it
gets old. If these folks would ask FIRST, they would in all likelyhood be
let in with open arms, however, we have stopped trying to "work with" the
new players that continually pop up. Simply put - I am tired of spending
cycles on an involuntary basis, and I seriously doubt that I am alone in
this.
I would be very interested (off list please) in knowing if this is
a mainstream position, or (as I have been so often told) if I am just
spending too much time talking to my crack pipe 
But either way, I
believe that folks who want to send significant amounts of unsolicited
traffic (significant is loosely UNdefined for the moment, OK?) would be
better served by simply looking up the appropriate registry contacts for
networks *they wish to use*, and _asking_ first. Hell, we might even say
yes 
</rant>
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
<rant>
Digital Island is certainly not alone in their practice of
assuming an opt-in stance.
I think you know that for an operation like Digital Island or Akamai, asking
every network operator permission to probe is for all practical purposes,
impossible. Insisting on opt-in is insisting on these companies going out
of
business, or not even starting up at all.
- ---
"The avalanche has already begun. It is too late for the pebbles to vote" -
Kosh
I wonder if Digital Island "probes" .mil sites.
-Dan
PING www.army.mil (140.183.234.10): 56 data bytes
^C
--- www.army.mil ping statistics ---
2 packets transmitted, 0 packets received, 100% packet loss
Am I a terrorist now too?
The FBI, NSA and Secret Service have all been sent
to your location.. (just kidding).
In another time, the above would all be funny.