[outages] Level3 taking the Southern Route from Boston to Poughkeepsie

[Steve Bohrer]

Hi,

Bard College at Simon's Rock (simons-rock.edu) is a small college in  
Southwestern Mass, with our parent campus, Bard (bard.edu), in the  
Hudson Valley near Rhinebeck, NY.

We use a database hosted on the main campus, and poor database  
performance here is often correlated with Level3 / Global Crossing  
issues in New York city. Today my users are complaining about slow  
database response, and I find that traceroutes from here, and from  
Level3's Looking Glass Boston page now go from NYC to Poughkeepsie via  
Washington, Atlanta, and Miami. This is a new routing; traces from  
past months went directly from NYC to Poughkeepsie.

I've reported this to our provider, who has presumably passed it along  
to Level3, but I'm wondering if these goofy routes are part of a work- 
around of some bigger issue in NYC, or just a screw up, or perhaps  
there is some valid business reason for this routing change?

Anyone else seeing strangeness via Level3 from NYC to the Hudson?


Here's Level3's traceroute, from http://lg.level3.net/traceroute/traceroute.cgi?site=bos1&target=hyphen.bard.edu 
  :

Show Level 3 (Boston, MA) Traceroute to hyphen.bard.edu (192.246.235.1)

  1 ae-2-7.bar1.Boston1.Level3.net (4.69.132.242) 0 msec 0 msec 0 msec
  2 ae-0-11.bar2.Boston1.Level3.net (4.69.140.90) 0 msec 0 msec 4 msec
  3 ae-8-8.ebr1.NewYork1.Level3.net (4.69.140.98) 32 msec 32 msec 36  
msec
  4 ae-10-10.ebr2.Washington12.Level3.net (4.69.148.50) 32 msec 32  
msec 36 msec
  5 ae-1-100.ebr1.Washington12.Level3.net (4.69.143.213) 36 msec 44  
msec 44 msec
  6 ae-6-6.ebr1.Atlanta2.Level3.net (4.69.148.105) 72 msec 36 msec 36  
msec
  7 ae-1-100.ebr2.Atlanta2.Level3.net (4.69.132.34) 32 msec 36 msec 44  
msec
  8 ae-2-2.ebr2.Miami1.Level3.net (4.69.140.141) 36 msec 40 msec 36 msec
  9 ae-2-52.edge1.Miami2.Level3.net (4.69.138.107) 32 msec 36 msec 36  
msec
  10 64.209.106.214 36 msec 36 msec 36 msec
  11 10gigabitethernet1-1.core1.atl1.he.net (72.52.92.53) [AS6939  
{HURRICANE}] 40 msec 36 msec 40 msec
  12 10gigabitethernet6-4.core1.ash1.he.net (184.105.213.109) [AS6939  
{HURRICANE}] 40 msec 40 msec 52 msec
  13 10gigabitethernet1-2.core1.nyc4.he.net (72.52.92.85) [AS6939  
{HURRICANE}] 40 msec 48 msec 48 msec
  14 10gigabitethernet4-1.core1.nyc5.he.net (184.105.213.218) [AS6939  
{HURRICANE}] 40 msec 48 msec 48 msec
  15 * lightower-fiber-networks.10gigabitethernet3-2.core1.nyc5.he.net  
(216.66.50.106) [AS6939 {HURRICANE}] 208 msec 204 msec
  16 xe-0-3-0.pghknyshj42.lightower.net (72.22.160.150) [AS46887  
{LIGHTOWER}] 208 msec * 220 msec
  17 ae0-pghknyshj91.lightower.net (72.22.160.158) [AS46887  
{LIGHTOWER}] 92 msec 64 msec 44 msec
  18 xe-7-2-0.kgtnnykgj91.lightower.net (72.22.160.107) [AS46887  
{LIGHTOWER}] 196 msec 128 msec 312 msec
  19 BardCollege-cust.customer.hvdata.net (64.72.66.234) [AS46887  
{LIGHTOWER}] 164 msec * *

(In the past, we sometimes got a nice short route directly from Level3  
in Boston to Lightower.net in Boston, as Lightower seems to have a  
direct link Poughkeepsie to Boston. However, when Level3 merged with  
Global Crossing, our route to Bard started going through NYC to reach  
Lightower, which has been more troublesome.)

Thanks for any hints you can offer.

Steve Bohrer
Network Admin
Bard College at Simon's Rock
413-528-7645