Sorry for posting... but we couldnt reach Yahoo, Google, Microsoft directly.
I recommend you guys setup a "Don't have a contact for" list instead
of this bullshit we're experiencing on NANOG month in month out, jeez.
Theres no excuse,
Good day.
n3td3v wrote:
Sorry for posting... but we couldnt reach Yahoo, Google, Microsoft directly.
I recommend you guys setup a "Don't have a contact for" list instead
of this bullshit we're experiencing on NANOG month in month out, jeez.Theres no excuse,
You got kicked from the one list no one gets kicked of, Full-Disclosure, and came to NANOG to kill all conversation?
On the other hand, he *does* have a valid point. Why *do* we keep seeing
queries for the same networks?
It's impossible to contact some of these companies; emails sent to role
contacts just go unanswered. I had lots of problems trying to contact one of
the above mentioned ones (about peering) recently. All contact numbers
divert into a telephone drone repeating "we do not have technical support at
this time". Contact with humans is strictly forbidden.
I suppose your hope-of-last-resort is that someone from $Giant_corp sees you
posting on Nanog and replies.
At the end of the day this is never going to stop. It's much easier posting
to Nanog than spending 4 hours on the phone trying to locate someone with a
clue in one of these big companies.
Ivan
[...]
On the other hand, he *does* have a valid point. Why *do* we keep
seeing queries for the same networks?
Well, at least it does serve as a warning to anybody who might have
been considering using their services.
All it would take is for http://puck.nether.net to carry either the correct
contact info once it's been discovered, so it doesn't have to be rediscovered
over and over, or a "Don't bother" entry(*) so people don't have to re-discover
that there's no way to get there from here.
There's also the deeper question: Why do we let the situation persist? Why do
we tolerate the continued problems from unreachable companies? (And yes, this *is*
an operational issue - what did that 4 hours on the phone cost your company's
bottom line in wasted time?)
(*) And yes, I'm *FULLY* aware of at least the top 17 reasons why That Just
Won't Work, so don't bother posting a reply unless you've got a particularly
interesting number 18 - the *point* is that *IF* the info was listed, it would
help solve the problem of wasting time trying to reach these companies.
Economics. Some of those unreachable companies (the majority?) are huge
networks who your customers care about reaching for whatever reason.
Until someone comes up with a way of punishing them, or their customers,
without punishing themselves, or their own customers equally.....
Sounds like one for pledgebank.... something like "we'll delay every email to
every domain listed in rfc-ignorant for 30(?) minutes if 500 other email
admins will do the same"....
All comes back to Internet death sentence type thinking. Although I think
delaying email is perhaps better than null routing the network, since it
hurts enough to highlight the issue, but isn't too damaging.
Better ideas sought.
Earlier, Valdis scribbled:
There's also the deeper question: Why do we let the situation persist?
Why do we tolerate the continued problems from unreachable companies?
(And yes, this *is* an operational issue - what did that 4 hours on the
phone cost your company's bottom line in wasted time?)
To a certain extent, it's simple economic logic.
At the end of the day, I got my issue sorted and it cost me 4 hours of
billable time. It cost the other party 15 minutes of time. Why employ
another person full time to deal with queries or man an email desk, to save
*me* 3h45min? It makes economic sense for bigger companies not to, well,
"care". They aren't going to go away, you're not going to get in the way of
the big Google/MS/BigCorp(tm) engine with gripes on your blog, so why bother
spending more money on helping *you*?
It might sound very black and white, but I can tell you now that a lot of
these companies use that as a rationale even without thinking about it so
directly.
The whole situation is unfortunate. It seems that basic business ethics are
going down the drain quicker and quicker.
Maybe companies should start programming AliceBots to deal with
technical/commonly asked queries via the LiveSupport button on their
website. (hey, that sounds like a business idea!)
It would be time better spent than phoning someone's automated answering
box... imho
Regards,
Ivan
actually, working for a largish company, I'd say one aspect not recognized
is the scale on their side of the problem... abuse@mci|uu|vzb gets (on a
bad month) 800k messages, on a 'good' month only 400k ... how many do
yahoo/google/msn get? How many do their role accounts get for
hostmaster/postmaster/routing/peering ?? Expecting that you can send an
email and get a response 'quickly' is just no reasonable unless you expect
just an auto-ack from their ticketting system.
-Chris
Because no-one has the balls to punish them in a way that really hurt
their bottom line. It's mostly about companies where ops are not allowed
to work on problems not related to paying customers. I bet their
bean-counters would create accounts for misc-problems in record time if
the top 10 transit networks would null-route their AS'es for a while.
Get together - define the requirements - enforce - strict, no
exceptions!
//per
uhm, where's the incentive in that for a 'tier-1' provider? most of the
folks mentioned are customers or peers, so there exists a contact path
already...
Where does the AOL-GoodMail deal fit in with that? How much do *your*
customers care about reaching AOL?
I'm sorry, but being a larger company requires more resources to support it.
Our upstream provider has only 3 to 5 people in their NOC during the day,
but they only serve a couple dozen ITCs. A bigger company generates more
revenue and accordingly has increased responsibilities. Largish companies
benefit from economies of scale (their overnight crew *actually* has calls
to take) and will likely have better processes in place to handle things
efficiently.
What do you think the messages:NOC man-hours ratio is? I would argue that
smaller operations provide better service, but it costs them more per
message, or whatever metric you want to use.
Frank
I'd like to see evidence that there is a problem. For example,
don't see why these worm lists couldn't have just gone to the
abuse address. It would've been cheaper to go knock on peoples
doors and hand them a free copy of Norton A/V if what I hear
about the many groups of paid people being involved.
You're describing a chicken and egg problem.
1. Closed communities will always have fringes.
2. Most people out here "Paging Yahoo! Paging MSN!" are end
users and they should be calling the listed support lines.
I said most, not all.
I test this theory once in awhile by responding "what network
are you with, I know someone at..." and I usually get the answer
back that "I'm a customer of and my cable modem is...".
3. Trust. I noticed the world is still here today.
I don't disagree that puck should have good data on it,
Operators customers, (read manning: define network operator), should not
be bypass them by coming here. Usually, the customer is shifting the cost
of support off of their own provider and on to the rest of us which is
inherently not fair.
I think it's ok to post these things to NANOG as long as there's
more information than just who they are looking for. If it's too private
to tell all of us, then don't use our list as a directory service.
-M<
Martin Hannigan (c) 617-388-2663
Renesys Corporation (w) 617-395-8574
Member of the Technical Staff Network Operations
hannigan@renesys.com
The heart of this problem, like so many other problems before it, is that
most people are dumber than dirt itself. When people are posting to NANOG
for a contact, they're saying "hey I'm a network engineer who knows what
he's talking about, looking for a way to directly contact another network
engineer to quickly resolve a problem without having to stay on hold and
explain the situation to 20 people who wouldn't understand it anyways for
the next 4 hours". Well at least thats how it started, then everyone who
reads NANOG started using the same system for their "my traceroute is
broken" complaints and now we're flooded with them.
The reality is that the vast vast majority of "issues" people take it upon
themselves to contact a network over are non-existant, the people doing
the contacting are remarkably stupid, and more often than not they're the
kind of people who are going to be abusive(*) and threatening about it. I
know from my own personal experience the ratio of bogus to legit calls
regarding security/hacking is around 10:1 on a good day. If there was a
number that anyone could call to speak to a clueful person at Yahoo, said
clueful person would quit on the second day after the 500th call
threatening to sue him because he's hacking a computer on port 80.
Until someone invents a universally recognized system where you can call
and say "Hi I'm CCIE #12345, I'm certified to know what I'm talking about
and I have an actual network issue, please transfer me to someone with
clue", we're going to continue to see the problem of letting the legit
calls through while seperating out the calls from J. Random Crackmonkey
who is sniffing the ajax. And from the customer perspective, if you don't
want to sit on the phone going through the "have you tried rebooting your
router" script when you call to complain that BGP on an OC48 is down, try
buying from a smaller company who focuses on providing service to clueful
networks and who doesn't need call screeners for its customers.
(*) My all-time personal favorite (not at all work safe) is:
http://www.e-gerbil.net/ras/this-man-hates-spam
I'd like to see evidence that there is a problem. For example, don't
see why these worm lists couldn't have just gone to the abuse address.
Of course that's the right answer. IN THEORY. The practice is rather
different, and that's WHY the need for some direct contact exists.
I followed through with two large UK ISPs, who had both had the list of
worm IPs sent to their official abuse address. In neither case had the
mail been read or passed on. A copy to their security specialists was
appreciated, and resulted in much hurried activity. No, I'm not going
to identify who they were; there probably would have been many more ISPs
in that position if I'd looked further.
the customer is shifting the cost of support off of their own provider
and on to the rest of us which is inherently not fair.
s/customer/provider/ - if the provider wasn't doing that, the customer
quite likely WOULD have gone directly to them.
I think it's ok to post these things to NANOG as long as there's more
information than just who they are looking for. If it's too private
to tell all of us, then don't use our list as a directory service.
True. Nevertheless there is a need for some directory system, so that
appropriate people can contact key security etc people in other network
entities, without giving NANOG a full-disclosure on the situation ...
you are surprised that a URL in email with little useful explanation was
passed over by their ticketting system? Direct access works for small
cases, or important high value targets... Abusing that with a big list, or
massive oversubscription will just cause it to fail.
If you have a large scale problem, use the accepted large scale problem
bucket: abuse@ don't find some lonely person who spends their personal
time to help you on individual cases or high priority items to abuse with
this... 'use the right tool for the job'.
How about INOC-DBA, which is supposed to have a clue threshold you
obtained an ASN by some means in order to have a dial-by-asn phone.
On Fri, 3 Feb 2006 14:10:26 -0500, "Richard A Steenbergen"
[snip]
The heart of this problem, like so many other problems before it, is that
most people are dumber than dirt itself.
So ... responsible prociders should only serve customers with some
minimum IQ?
As said elsewhere in the thread; the responsible thing to do is to scale
operations properly. You have to find other ways to deal with people's
stipidity than to ignore them completely.
//per
Obtaining an ASN isn't much of a clue threshold.