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

Thu Oct 4 15:22:34 EDT 2012

Thanks Jeremy,

I saw your post last week, and found it very useful. In fact the route  
is asymmetrical: traces from Bard back to us go from Lightower's  
Poughkeepsie location directly to Boston, and skip NYC altogether -- I  
wish we could get that route both directions!

My concern is that the traceroute from here to Bard was suddenly much  
longer than in past months, and I got the same results directly from  
Level3, so that made me think it wasn't something goofy with our last  
mile. But, as John noted above, now it works as expected now from  
Level3's page, and also from our site. I don't know if the timing of  
this fix shortly after my post was just coincidental, or if the ticket  
I filed with my provider at 12:30 finally trickled through the system,  
or if perhaps the act of posting to Outages got someone at Level3 to  
notice.

In any case, it works again now the way it did yesterday, so I'm all  
set.

Steve Bohrer
ITS, Bard College at Simon's Rock
413-528-7645

On Oct 4, 2012, at 3:02 PM, Jeremy Chadwick wrote:

> Steve,
>
> And what about a traceroute from hyphen.bard.edu to wherever that L3
> looking glass is?  Since the source (of the looking glass) doesn't
> appear to be shown, I would say a traceroute from hyphen.bard.edu to
> 4.69.132.242 would be the 2nd best thing to have (and ignore any  
> packet
> loss you see at that destination; it's a router not a machine).
>
> Just last week on the mailing list I covered the importance of having
> traceroutes from both directions, re: asymmetrical routing.  The PDF
> I've linked should be read in full:
>
> https://puck.nether.net/pipermail/outages/2012-September/004466.html
>
> -- 
> | Jeremy Chadwick                                   jdc at koitsu.org |
> | UNIX Systems Administrator                http://jdc.koitsu.org/ |
> | Mountain View, CA, US                                            |
> | Making life hard for others since 1977.             PGP 4BD6C0CB |
>
> On Thu, Oct 04, 2012 at 02:35:07PM -0400, Steve Bohrer wrote:
>> 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	
>>
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