9th Gigapop Geeks BOF hosted by Dan Magorian & Brent Sweeny

1. 9th Gigapop Geeks BOFhosted 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

2. 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?

3. “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

4. Hardly seems any point in even discussing possible solutions • We can if anyone still has any hope. • <This is not rhetorical>. • 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.

5. 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)

6. 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 <for now>. • A source of low-cost non-I2 non-NLR non-Level 3 10G lambdas from a vendor like Qwest would facilitate this.

7. 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.

8. Thanks! Any volunteers for talks next time? Discussion topics you’d like to hear? magorian@maxgigapop.net