Re: [Misc][Rant] Internet router (straying slightly OT)

2005-10-03 Thread Patrick W. Gilmore


On Sep 30, 2005, at 11:53 AM, Steven M. Bellovin wrote:

In message [EMAIL PROTECTED], Randy Bush  
writes:

To get an understanding of routing-protocols, begin with RIP[3] and
perhaps run your own RIP-lab


necromancy will be severely punished.


many hand-on routing workshops start with rip, though with the
warning you will now learn why not to use rip.  it makes it
easy to teach poison reverse, ... in a relatively small setting.


And it's much easier to understand, at least for a beginner.


I've been teaching routing protocols for a long time, and I almost  
always start with RIP for people who don't know what protocol means.


If you start with OSPF or IS-IS, you invariably get caught up in  
things like what is 'link state'? or why does Shortest Path First  
take that path when it's 'longer'?  Plus any Internet engineer  
needs to know about things like hop-count before they can truly  
understand BGP.


Also, I usually include reasons to use RIP in a production network.   
They are few and far between, but RIP has properties which could be  
considered features when compared to other protocols.


--
TTFN,
patrick


Re: [Misc][Rant] Internet router (straying slightly OT)

2005-10-01 Thread Petri Helenius


Per Gregers Bilse wrote:


Life begins with ARP.

 

I would have to argue that for majority of things connected to IP 
networks, life begins with DHCPDISCOVER.


Pete



Re: [Misc][Rant] Internet router

2005-09-30 Thread Elmar K. Bins

[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Per Gregers Bilse) wrote:

 My finest Dilbert moment; it's over ten years old now, in fact.
[...]
*g*
It is _so_ true and so happens in probably 80% of the companies.

 It got so bad that if there was nothing to report (ie, no outages, no
 problems, everything just worked) Boss was convinced we (network
 techies) were either lying, or superfluous.

I myself get that feeling sometimes. My boss doesn't, because he
always knows of one more project that could be done...nasty :-)

Elmar.

--

Begehe nur nicht den Fehler, Meinung durch Sachverstand zu substituieren.
  (PLemken, [EMAIL PROTECTED])

--[ ELMI-RIPE ]---



Re: [Misc][Rant] Internet router (straying slightly OT)

2005-09-30 Thread Sabri Berisha

On Thu, Sep 29, 2005 at 05:39:30PM -0400, Mark Owen wrote:

 Any suggestions?

Start with the OSI[1] model to grasp the fundamentals, next make sure
you have a basic knowledge of how TCP/IP addressing works[2]. To get
an understanding of routing-protocols, begin with RIP[3] and perhaps
run your own RIP-lab by using Quagga[4] software on a Linux box. That
will get you off the streets for a weekend :)

Cheers,

-- 
Sabri

please do not throw salami pizza away

[1] http://www.cisco.com/univercd/cc/td/doc/cisintwk/ito_doc/introint.htm
[2] http://www.networkclue.com/routing/tcpip/addressing.php
[3] http://www.livinginternet.com/i/iw_route_igp_rip.htm
[4] http://www.quagga.net


Re: [Misc][Rant] Internet router (straying slightly OT)

2005-09-30 Thread Robert E . Seastrom


Sabri Berisha [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 To get
 an understanding of routing-protocols, begin with RIP[3] and perhaps
 run your own RIP-lab

necromancy will be severely punished.

---rob



Re: [Misc][Rant] Internet router (straying slightly OT)

2005-09-30 Thread Valdis . Kletnieks
On Fri, 30 Sep 2005 05:50:52 EDT, Robert E.Seastrom said:
 Sabri Berisha [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
  To get
  an understanding of routing-protocols, begin with RIP[3] and perhaps
  run your own RIP-lab
 
 necromancy will be severely punished.

Sayeth RFC1925:

   (4)  Some things in life can never be fully appreciated nor
understood unless experienced firsthand. Some things in
networking can never be fully understood by someone who neither
builds commercial networking equipment nor runs an operational
network.

Just remember, all you dabblers - a properly designed lab environment is called
for, for the same reasons a pentagram is called for... :)



pgpTwEiKRTCxr.pgp
Description: PGP signature


Re: [Misc][Rant] Internet router (straying slightly OT)

2005-09-30 Thread Randy Bush

 To get an understanding of routing-protocols, begin with RIP[3] and
 perhaps run your own RIP-lab
 necromancy will be severely punished.

many hand-on routing workshops start with rip, though with the
warning you will now learn why not to use rip.  it makes it
easy to teach poison reverse, ... in a relatively small setting.

randy



Re: [Misc][Rant] Internet router (straying slightly OT)

2005-09-30 Thread Joe Abley



On 30-Sep-2005, at 09:32, Randy Bush wrote:


To get an understanding of routing-protocols, begin with RIP[3] and
perhaps run your own RIP-lab


necromancy will be severely punished.


many hand-on routing workshops start with rip, though with the
warning you will now learn why not to use rip.  it makes it
easy to teach poison reverse, ... in a relatively small setting.


RIP also has the advantage that a worked, non-trivial example of the  
protocol can fit on a whiteboard, which makes it a reasonable way to  
teach the concept of a routing protocol to a classroom full of people  
who have never heard of such at thing.


Absolutely agreed, however, that such teaching also necessarily  
involves emphatic shouting of YOU WILL NOT TURN THIS ON IN YOUR  
PRODUCTION NETWORK.


[ObAnecdote: I once heard of an airline reservations desk in Hong  
Kong which had a backup connection to the airline's main centre of  
operations far distant from Hong Kong, using dial-on-demand ISDN,  
circa 1995. The monthly invoice for international ISDN charges that  
followed a contractor's decision to fix the router by turning on  
RIP was apparently an impressive thing to behold, especially given  
the agressive ISDN idle tear-down configured on the router and  
minimum 1-minute billing per call.]



Joe


Re: [Misc][Rant] Internet router (straying slightly OT)

2005-09-30 Thread Sabri Berisha

On Fri, Sep 30, 2005 at 10:01:34AM -0400, Joe Abley wrote:

Hi,

 RIP also has the advantage that a worked, non-trivial example of the  
 protocol can fit on a whiteboard, which makes it a reasonable way to  
 teach the concept of a routing protocol to a classroom full of people  
 who have never heard of such at thing.

Which is exactly the reason why I mentioned RIP as a routing protocol to
start with. Using RIP instead of OSPF or IS-IS has 2 advantages: one is
the simplyness of the concept and the second one you already mentioned:
 
 Absolutely agreed, however, that such teaching also necessarily  
 involves emphatic shouting of YOU WILL NOT TURN THIS ON IN YOUR  
 PRODUCTION NETWORK.

You learn why not to use RIP in an early stage of your career.

Mentioning the terms router-lsa, network-summary-lsa or nssa-lsa
to a person who potentially does not even know the difference between a
distance-vector and a link-state protocol has no positive effect on the
learning curve.

-- 
Sabri

please do not throw salami pizza away


Re: [Misc][Rant] Internet router (straying slightly OT)

2005-09-30 Thread Steven M. Bellovin

In message [EMAIL PROTECTED], Randy Bush writes:

 To get an understanding of routing-protocols, begin with RIP[3] and
 perhaps run your own RIP-lab
 necromancy will be severely punished.

many hand-on routing workshops start with rip, though with the
warning you will now learn why not to use rip.  it makes it
easy to teach poison reverse, ... in a relatively small setting.

And it's much easier to understand, at least for a beginner.

--Steven M. Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb




Re: [Misc][Rant] Internet router (straying slightly OT)

2005-09-30 Thread Marshall Eubanks

On Thu, 29 Sep 2005 17:39:30 -0400
 Mark Owen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 
 On 9/29/05, Warren Kumari [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
  I have met Senior Network Engineers who don't understand longest
  match rule (The traffic will take 10/8 instead of 10.0.0.0/24
  because it has a better admin distance, I can override these 300
  OSPF routes with a single static supernet, etc), who believe that
  routers will not route between directly connected interfaces without
  putting them into a routing protocol, that transit networks don't
  need a full mesh of iBGP[1] because you can just redistribute BGP
  into [OSPF/IS-IS/IGP of choice], that ICMP uses TCP as a transport,
  etc.
 
 In a similar note, I Do care about networks and the like but fail to
 fully understand the extensive details of how it all works.  I do not
 proclaim myself to be an engineer and try to stick with what I do
 well.  I read rfc, wikipedia, etc but just don't know what /to/ read. 
 I had never heard of iBGP, OSPF, IS-IS untill today.  What I need, and
 I'm sure quite a few others who listen to this list for insight, is a
 good reference to pick up and read that will cover said topics and
 beyond.  I finally got the basic concept to CIDRs and how they work
 thanks to this list and Google.
 
 I know this message is slightly off topic from NANOG, but kinda fits
 in response to parent and am hoping not to get flamed.

FWIW, I would suggest ISP Survival Guide: Strategies for Running a Competitive 
ISP (Paperback)
by Geoff Huston - ISBN: 0471314994, which does a good job with the basics, and 
is pretty
easy to read.

Regards
Marshall Eubanks



 
 Any suggestions?
 
 
 A Padawan,
 Mark Owen



Re: [Misc][Rant] Internet router

2005-09-29 Thread Warren Kumari



On Sep 29, 2005, at 12:56 PM, Elmar K. Bins wrote:



[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Elmar K. Bins) wrote:



That somehow sums it up quite good.



Folks, I'm taking this back, seeing that the original poster is not  
alone.


Makes me wonder as to what current network engineers do know  
about the
world they do networking in. I - please forgive me if this seems  
far-fetched -
would have thought everybody doing real networking (as in  
interconnecting
with other networks) would know where and how to look for that  
information

and how to interpret the usual tools' output.

Am I wrong?


Yes, sadly you are...

Part of the problem is that during dot-com boom (shudder) a large  
number of people heard that network engineering was easy money and  
took a class at the local community college. They don't like  
networks, they don't care about connectivity, its just a job to them.  
They don't want to learn anything and so they don't.


Unlike some other engineering fields (I think that civil engineers  
are an example of this), you don't have to get any sort of  
certification / license to claim that you are a network *engineer*. I  
have met Senior Network Engineers who don't understand longest  
match rule (The traffic will take 10/8 instead of 10.0.0.0/24  
because it has a better admin distance, I can override these 300  
OSPF routes with a single static supernet, etc), who believe that  
routers will not route between directly connected interfaces without  
putting them into a routing protocol, that transit networks don't  
need a full mesh of iBGP[1] because you can just redistribute BGP  
into [OSPF/IS-IS/IGP of choice], that ICMP uses TCP as a transport,  
etc. These are not simple brain-farts, there were all examples of  
deeply held beliefs that needed example networks built to convince  
the person otherwise (and the person who thought that routers would  
not route between directly connected networks without having the  
networks in a routing protocol still thinks that the example device  
was misfunctioning :-( ).


I am sure that there are other, much more scary examples out there,  
feel free to send me (humorous) examples, I need a laugh today...


Warren Bitter today Kumari
[1] Yeah, yeah, or route reflectors,  or confeds, or.. or... or...

* Please note, this is not directed at Ronald at all, who I am  
assuming is clue-full but hadn't had coffee yet...




Puzzled,
Elmar.

--

Begehe nur nicht den Fehler, Meinung durch Sachverstand zu  
substituieren.
  (PLemken, [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
berlin.de)


-- 
[ ELMI-RIPE ]---







Re: [Misc][Rant] Internet router (straying slightly OT)

2005-09-29 Thread Mark Owen

On 9/29/05, Warren Kumari [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 I have met Senior Network Engineers who don't understand longest
 match rule (The traffic will take 10/8 instead of 10.0.0.0/24
 because it has a better admin distance, I can override these 300
 OSPF routes with a single static supernet, etc), who believe that
 routers will not route between directly connected interfaces without
 putting them into a routing protocol, that transit networks don't
 need a full mesh of iBGP[1] because you can just redistribute BGP
 into [OSPF/IS-IS/IGP of choice], that ICMP uses TCP as a transport,
 etc.

In a similar note, I Do care about networks and the like but fail to
fully understand the extensive details of how it all works.  I do not
proclaim myself to be an engineer and try to stick with what I do
well.  I read rfc, wikipedia, etc but just don't know what /to/ read. 
I had never heard of iBGP, OSPF, IS-IS untill today.  What I need, and
I'm sure quite a few others who listen to this list for insight, is a
good reference to pick up and read that will cover said topics and
beyond.  I finally got the basic concept to CIDRs and how they work
thanks to this list and Google.

I know this message is slightly off topic from NANOG, but kinda fits
in response to parent and am hoping not to get flamed.

Any suggestions?


A Padawan,
Mark Owen


RE: [Misc][Rant] Internet router (straying slightly OT)

2005-09-29 Thread Neil J. McRae

I'd start with Sam Halabi's Internet Routing Architectures book.

 In a similar note, I Do care about networks and the like but 
 fail to fully understand the extensive details of how it all 
 works.  I do not proclaim myself to be an engineer and try to 
 stick with what I do well.  I read rfc, wikipedia, etc but 
 just don't know what /to/ read. 
 I had never heard of iBGP, OSPF, IS-IS untill today.  What I 
 need, and I'm sure quite a few others who listen to this list 
 for insight, is a good reference to pick up and read that 
 will cover said topics and beyond.  I finally got the basic 
 concept to CIDRs and how they work thanks to this list and Google.
 
 I know this message is slightly off topic from NANOG, but 
 kinda fits in response to parent and am hoping not to get flamed.
 
 Any suggestions?
 
 
 A Padawan,
 Mark Owen
 



Re: [Misc][Rant] Internet router (straying slightly OT)

2005-09-29 Thread Aaron Glenn

On 9/29/05, Mark Owen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 Any suggestions?


Keep reading everything you can get your hands on. When faced with a
question like who owns this router?, don't waste your time signing
up for a mailing list just to make a fool of yourself. Do some
research. Keep reading. And before you know it, you'll have taught
yourself an amazing amount of knowledge.

It really is that simple.


Re: [Misc][Rant] Internet router (straying slightly OT)

2005-09-29 Thread matthew zeier




Any suggestions?


Keep reading everything you can get your hands on. When faced with a
question like who owns this router?, don't waste your time signing
up for a mailing list just to make a fool of yourself. Do some
research. Keep reading. And before you know it, you'll have taught
yourself an amazing amount of knowledge.

It really is that simple.



Alternatively, force yourself to study for Cisco's CCNA.  That will, at the 
very least, give you a basic (vendor-specific?) understanding of networking.


--
matthew zeier - Curiosity is a willing, a proud, an eager confession
of ignorance. - Leonard Rubenstein


Re: [Misc][Rant] Internet router

2005-09-29 Thread Per Gregers Bilse

On Sep 29,  1:34pm [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 I am sure that there are other, much more scary examples out there,  
 feel free to send me (humorous) examples, I need a laugh today...

My finest Dilbert moment; it's over ten years old now, in fact.

Boss:  Per, I need you to write much more comprehensive reports than
   you do now.  I need much more detail.

Per:   But ... but why?  I already spend at least half a day every week
   writing reports.

Boss:  So I can help you become more productive.

100% genuine true story.

It got so bad that if there was nothing to report (ie, no outages, no
problems, everything just worked) Boss was convinced we (network
techies) were either lying, or superfluous.  But that was a long time
ago, I'm sure things have changed a lot ... :-)

Best,

  -- Per


Re: [Misc][Rant] Internet router (straying slightly OT)

2005-09-29 Thread Steve Thomas

On Thu, Sep 29, 2005 at 02:45:20PM -0700, Aaron is rumored to have said:
 
 When faced with a
 question like who owns this router?, don't waste your time signing
 up for a mailing list just to make a fool of yourself. Do some
 research. Keep reading. And before you know it, you'll have taught
 yourself an amazing amount of knowledge.

I'm not a guru like most on this list, which is why I rarely chime in despite 
having been subscribed for 5 or 6 years, but Aaron nailed it here. I used this 
technique when I wanted to run my own DNS, mail  web servers and managed to 
teach myself all I needed to know to accomplish those things simply by reading 
what was available online. I also picked up a few books along the way, but 
everything you need is on the 'net. 


St-

-- 
Tower, Observatory
  You stand in what appears to be a room designed specifically
  for studying the stars. Lying haphazardly cast about the room
  are several charts with constellations, some neatly folded, 
  others lying left open. Beside a few of the starcharts are 
  several magical tomes.



RE: [Misc][Rant] Internet router (straying slightly OT)

2005-09-29 Thread Per Gregers Bilse

On Sep 29, 10:42pm [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 I'd start with Sam Halabi's Internet Routing Architectures book.

Grumble ... with reference to the issue of routing between connected
networks, your choice might be too advanced.

Douglas Comer's Internetworking With TCP/IP Vol I has been one of the
best introductions for years (soon literally decades), and should be
required reading before progressing to more advanced topics.

Life begins with ARP.

http://www.cs.purdue.edu/homes/dec/netbooks.html

Best,

  -- Per


Re: [Misc][Rant] Internet router (straying slightly OT)

2005-09-29 Thread matthew zeier





Life begins with ARP.


Or RARP, depending !


--
matthew zeier - Curiosity is a willing, a proud, an eager confession
of ignorance. - Leonard Rubenstein