RE: Common causes of performance problems and outages

From: Maya [mailto:myajnik@research.telcordia.com]
Sent: Monday, July 02, 2001 10:31 AM

Hello,
I want to find out the most common causes of
performance problems as well as outages in
networks today. Any information is welcome!

In no particular order;

1:Peering polcies resulting in really bizarre business-dictated routes.
2:Over-booking on broadband links (cable-modems)
3:Over extended growth by DSL operators (w/ resultant business failures, ie
NorthPoint).
4:RBOCs ... ALL of them.
5:Fixing what ain't broke.
6:Forgetting why you did something and then doing it "right" later.
7:ICANN for broken DNS (which BIZ you iz).
8:NewNet, for REALLY proving 7:.
9:The A**holes that write scripts for script-kiddies.
10: ...I'll stop while I'm behind....

Note that very little of the above had anything to do with technology and
everything to do with people.

s/2:/2a:/
s/on broadband links/on HFC segments/
2b: DSL operators wildly oversubscribing the link
        between the DSLAM and the first-hop router.

2a/2b are equivalent problems, but the location of
oversubscription risk varies with the technology.

11: Deployment of "advanced" technologies that a reasonable
        NOC cannot make work in one's backbone/core.