[outages] Communication Infrastructure [was: Ok, ok; Jeezus, people... it was a joke.]

[Patrick W. Gilmore]

On Feb 07, 2013, at 21:01 , Stephen Wilcox <steve.wilcox at ixreach.com> wrote:
> On 8 February 2013 01:47, Corey Quinn <corey at sequestered.net> wrote:
>> On Feb 7, 2013, at 5:41 PM, Stephen Wilcox <steve.wilcox at ixreach.com> wrote:

>> No, it qualifies given that almost every consumer (and a fair few
>> business) facing service out there lets you use either Twitter or Facebook
>> to authenticate; it's in the same bucket as 8.8.8.8 going down.  Widespread
>> service failures for end users result if it happens, and is the kind of
>> thing that's useful to understand in the context of "why is the helpdesk
>> phone exploding."
> 
> The problem here is that 8.8.8.8 as well as many large web sites are
> distributed. Its legitimately down for you and not for 95% of the rest of
> its users which may in turn be only a small % of the wider telecom/internet
> user base.

And a cut between L3 & Sprint, or NYC & LON, which you seem to think qualify, is still "local" and "may in turn be only a small % of the wider telecom/internet user base".

Aren't definitions fun?


> Its also clear from the recent posts that the details of how operators like
> Facebook and Google architect their applications is not well understood by
> its users.

Oh, please, the details of how Operators like L3 & COLT operate their fiber infrastructure is not understood by L3 & COLT!


> Hence we have issues reported which result in large threads which end up
> being of little use to anyone, even the users of those apps.
> 
> Signal to Noise = poor

I think the S:N ratio is orthogonal to whether it is FB, DNS, or fiber.


> I refer again to the list's already written mandate:  "failures of major
> communications infrastructure components having significant
> traffic-carrying capacity"

Assume Akamai has an outage (using an intentionally impossible scenario just to prove a point :).  Would that be "communications infrastructure"?  Akamai has essentially zero fiber.  How about "significant traffic-carrying capacity"?  Akamai has no network.  Is it useful to the outages community?

I would argue that "communications infrastructure" can easily encompass more than routers, DWDM, and fiber.  I would also argue that things which direct enormous amounts of traffic (FB, Netflix, Google, iPlayer, etc.) count, even though they do not actually _carry_ any traffic.


> This is definitely not encompassing Layer-7. I understand its important to
> a set of users, thats why I suggest there ought to be a place where those
> users can discuss those issues.

This list isn't for discussion, we have -discuss for that.  (And I wonder if this thread should be there?)

This list is for notification.  And I would like to be notified if 8.8.8.8 or Netflix is down.

The list owners (or a vote of the members? I don't know how this works) can decide otherwise.  But your arguments are unpersuasive.

OTOH: I don't like seeing long threads of useless info (e.g. "Is FB down?  I can't load it." with no other info) any more than the next guy.  But I repeat, that's orthogonal to the thing which is down.  We see just as many clueless "fiber cut" notices as "google is down" notices, if not more.

-- 
TTFN,
patrick