9th Gigapop Geeks BOF hosted by Dan Magorian & Brent Sweeny Welcome!! The forum where Gigapop/RON operators can rant, rave, and be politically incorrect about current hot technical topics. Now that the 2 R&E nets are acting like competing vendors, how many neutral forums are left where free speech is still possible? Tonight’s discussion topics, 3 technical, 1 political: –More on MAX VRFs, v1 and v2: Dave Diller –More on bgp hinting: Brent Sweeny –CPS communities, troubleshooting: Caren Litvanyi –"It petered out with a sick thud: two competing R&E nets for the foreseeable future, and All That“: Dan

CPS/TransitRail Thoughts This is Caren’s topic, but before she starts on the technicals I wanted to do a quick informal poll: –How many operators in the room are using either settlement-free services? Which? Anyone using both for eg backup/redundancy? (Dave Farmer?) Both are growing, seem to be a useful approach. IU runs CPS, PNW/Cenic TR, could be argued that having competition might be a good thing. Or not. Also different approaches technically, VRFs vs separate routers (ASNs), pick the one you like. So what are people’s experiences? Any issues about transparency? (Where is TR’s router proxy?) Routing? Anything to talk about? As services, how do they really compare?

“ It petered out with a sick thud: two competing R&E nets for the foreseeable future, & All That”: OK, everyone is Totally Sick of this whole topic. Absolutely No One likes the way it is now. Serious brain drain out of the community as the smart techies That Have Always Been the Core –Realize that R&E networking is now more about CIO egos and religious loyalty than about doing cool stuff –So why not go off to Google or Amazon where Things are Still Happening and make a lot more money? The feud has trickled down to customers, –Who see the divisiveness and lack of direction and wonder if they’re spending their money well –Whereas RONs used to buffer them from these issues

Hardly seems any point in even discussing possible solutions We can if anyone still has any hope. –. –Does anyone not with I2 or NLR believe in some positive solution? –Most people just wish that Someone Would Buy Them Both and Solve It All For Us. Not bloody likely. By way of background, at MAX over the last year we’ve had our share of this come home to roost. All right then, so it seems like there might be a point in discussing potential outcomes.

So let me lay my pessimistic outcome on you, and we can argue about that. Almost everyone agrees that the current state isn’t sustainable. –Not enough money in the community for both. –Zero sum game for customers leads to Loyalty Paranoia –Neither one seems to be willing/able to give up or fold. –Both are now having severe financial issues, I2 laying off people, NLR having no real future funding model, etc etc. –So this “death grip” really can’t continue for very long. So I think that they’re –going to kill each other off and people are going to walk away from both and build the next generation. “R&E v6” (NSFnet v1, vBNS v2, Abilene v3, NLR v4, Newnet v5)

Having said that, this may be the last Geeks BOF that I2 is willing to buy the beer for Seriously, what would such a “v6” look like? It better not be under any 1 set of CIO-types’ control. –If we make that same mistake again, of creating another I2 or NLR under another name, –we might as well all go home and call it quits. So I think it’ll be a Different Animal. –No central control, built by the top Rons tossing lines to each other. The original Quilt-net vision. –Guess what? This is already happening for research waves. –Of course, the independent Quilt management committee has officially disavowed this approach. –A source of low-cost non-I2 non-NLR non-Level 3 10G lambdas from a vendor like Qwest would facilitate this.

I’m sure a lot of people, not just I2 and NLR folks, don’t like this idea much “That’s fine for research waves, like MAX can toss lambdas west to CHI, north to NYC, and south to ATL, and string vlans hither and yon” “But what about the IP network?” –Who’s going to pay for a common set of routers –run by smart folks like our friends at IU –for reliable/consistent service & advanced functionality. I don’t really have the answer to that. –Lack of consistent routing policy/platforms could be a disaster. Might try something poorly conceived and fail. –Plus throwing away all the work done by I2 and NLR. Will RONs have the smarts/courage to meet this challenge? I don’t see much alternative.

Thanks! Any volunteers for talks next time? Discussion topics you’d like to hear?