Slashdot Mirror
EBone/KPNQwest Network Shutting Down
reginald.barclay writes "As KPNQwest has filed for bankruptcy some time ago, also EBone, which they aquired some months ago, goes down the drain. Together, these two companies carried betwenn 1/3 and 1/2 of European IP Traffic (and, in the case of KPNQwest, an unknown portion of voice). Employees at Ebone were laid off last week and told to abandon their NOC. But instead of getting drunk and over with it, they occupied their former workplace. Now even their time is running out, and one of Europes oldest backbone carriers will probably be shut down today, at 1700 CET. I wonder how many of their customers (mostly ISPs and VBCs themselves) have managed to run to the competition in time. Nevertheless, I expect the routing in large parts of Europe to be very interesting (in the chinese sense, of course) over the coming weekend and early next week." Update: 06/14 18:02 GMT by M : Apparently KPNQwest's creditors have agreed to pay to keep the place going until the end of June.
Anyone know whether this will have an affect on the UK ?
Good show, it is nice to see people who appreciate their work enough to stick it out when no help or pay is in site. These guys should definitly hit the pints. Good effort.
The next time someone is talking on slashdot about how mergers are natural in the telecom industry, and telecom companies that lock down entire markets until they are local monopolies in some cities are Just Trying to Make a Living, and the government has no right to dictate that a telecom company be "nice" to their competitors, and there's absolutely no harm in megamerger after megamerger followed by competitors being disallowed from leasing space on the local telecom equipment..
I'm going to link this article.
And then i'm going to scream something incoherent along the lines of "BAD AYNDROID!! BAD!! BAD!! SINGLE POINT OF FAILURE BAD!! MONOCULTURE BAD!!, and then curl up in a little ball and cry because no-one really cares.
I'm sitting in an office in Brussels, it will be interesting to see how stopping this backbone affects the Internet in Europe. The BBD reported that Ebone carries 25%, their website reports 50%, of traffic in Europe.
Anyone tried this kind of nuclear blast on th Internet before?
My blog
Can someone translate that into say GMT for us? Not many people are gonna know what CET stands for.
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
I wonder if the UK outage has anything to do with the lack of posts. At the time I type this one, I see only 2. It's probally too early for the US posters I guess.
Understanding is a three-edged sword. -- Kosh Naranek
HTH
Ethelred
Everyone wants to be Ethelred. Even I want to be Ethelred.
One of their employee forums is reporting that, Rinus Beusenberg, a large shareholder in the company will start an investigation into the company's demise. There is even an ad in th Telegraaf newspaper. He is looking for ex-employees to perhaps shed some light on a possible Enron situation in the UK.
At least one ISP (Bahnhof) in Sweden has put in a bid for some of the european network infrastructure according to Computer Sweden. So perhaps parts of it wont go down just yet.
We already started to have routing trouble here in Germany. Mostly routes to German sites can't be established. That is from my regionla ISP here in Cologne (NetCologne), don't know how T-Online is doing. You could even see where a traceroute broke down when reaching KPN and was later established through other providers.
/.
At least there is no problem to connect to
***Quis custodiet ipsos custodes***
So they're EBoned then?
----------
"Yes, I have breasts. Now quit looking at them"
http://www.geek-ware.co.uk
If a new company presents a business plan .COM startups were,
to their potential investers, then the investors
decide if its a healthy business plan, and either
say yes or no. If a business plan is actually
a vapourware plan, like most
then these same investors should have said that
its a nogo.
So today these same investers are loosing
a rather large amount of money. Now who
is to blame in then end?
Robert
no way ! other people will do the whinning and complaining about the US for us. even if they are not socialists
The linked page says 5pm CET.
The countdown on the page gives an hour and a half, so it'll be down at 10am CST (or 4pm for you GMT fanatics).
Why not restore E-Bone to something close its pre-buyout state (assuming they actually made money...) so that it doesn't go down with the LMNO-whatever-Qwest ship? Just an idea...
Any sufficiently advanced influence is indistinguishable from control.
...due to KPNQwest's problems.
It took them 3 days to solve and now I don't see anymore problems.
Guvf vf abg n EBG zrffntr
The larger ISPs (as well as the more cautious smaller ones) probably have redundancy in the form of multiple backbones.
Mind you, I'm basing this on the North American landscape when it comes to backbones. No idea what the likelyhood would be of that in Europe.
Even then, there's probably quite a few smaller ISPs that have been scrambling like mad lately.
Dark Nexus
"Sanity is calming, but madness is more interesting."
I have a large stack of frisbees which gives the impression they may have arrived already. If they were rewritable I wouldn't mind :-)
I thought CEST was Central European *S*ummer Time, equivalent to BST and CET was equivalent to GMT. Except being an hour out of course.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
7 pm CET = 11 AM EST, at least according to their website.
7pm CET would be 6pm GMT... but its 17:00, according to the article "...Ebone network will be shut down tomorrow, Friday 14th of June at 1700 CET....". So thats 5pm CET, which means 4pm GMT. About 1.5hours to go.
;)
Maybe the poster of the story needs to read up on the 24-hr clock
I've noticed a similar trend. Much spam had the .tw, but now I'm seeing equal quantities with the .uk, for whatever that's worth...
According to Internet Traffic Report the router defra229-tc.ebone.ne is not responding. Several other KPNQwest/Ebone routers are still up though.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
It's on The Register too, but no one really seems to know for sure what's going on, or what the effects of a shutdown will be. I've seen reports of between 20% and 50% of current traffic, but no one is sure about what contingency plans (if any) are in place with KPNQwest's customers. As a result what are really only guesses as to the effect of shutdown vary from "none" to "disaster". It seems to me that the only thing that can be said for certain is that only time will tell. Anyway, are we always being told that the Internet was designed to withstand and route around this kind of thing? ;)
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
I haven't heard a thing about it from my ISP, or on the news.
Maybe everyone's confident it won't effect them.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
I am a bit worried. As far as I am aware, Tiscali Spain uses extensively KPNQwest. They use their own network, but KPNQwest carries much of the load. Wanadoo Spain also uses KPN, though their OpenTransit networks appears to be much more solid than Tiscali's one. They seem more prepared to me. Anyway, at 7pm we will know if the european internet survives or not. ;)
Im not familiar with most Euro lines, etc. but I use GMX for my primary email ... and if that goes down with this Im going to cry. Any idea how I can check?
The ultimate network admin tool needs HELP!
because you don't live in Europe, think again.
I live in Tennessee, but my email provider (Runbox.com) is based in Norway. Fortunately they managed to get their stuff together and should* be safe.
*should: a moral term that has nothing to do with computers. "It' should work." is a worthless statement.
"An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it." Col. Jeff Cooper
The article says 1700 CET, the poster said 7pm CET. Either (a) the poster trolled or (b) doesnt understand conversions from 24-hour format. It'll shutoff at 5pm CET, 4pm GMT, 11am EDT, 8am PDT.
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
For better or worse, a couple large networking companies in my aread have gone out business recent, one of whom is our upstream provider. Unlinke what sounds like may happen in this case, we had zero downtime. Another company bought the network for pennies on the dollar. Only way we can tell anything changes is we havn't gotten a bill for two months because the new company doesn't have their act together in that regard yet.
Similar thing happened with the major compition to Verizon. They went out of business, and to the best of my knowledge their customers who have not left (many did), have not lost service, although that whole fiasco is not finished.
Anyway, chances are, another large networking company will buy the network for almost nothing, and pick up where the existing company left off...just with much lower capital investments, which may lead to lower prices.
I for one believe things like this are a mixed blessing, and in some cases needed to lower the cost structure for providing these services. Kinda like a built in cost correction.
I may be way off base with this, but that's what I think base on what I have seen locally.
-Pete
Soccer Goal Plans
This is true, the latest Netcraft surveys confirmed it : the Internet is dying.
Let's have a look at some numbers. According to TCP/IP's leader Richard Stevens, ehm... nothing.
How many devices connected to the Internet do I have in my toilets? Zero. This is coherent with the number of posts on Usenet whoose title is "How to upgrade my toilets to IPv6"
{{.sig}}
almost. the poster didnt trnaslate 24-hour to 12 hour formats correctly. the article states 1700, that's 5pm, not 7pm as stated above. But 5pm CET == 11am EDT (10 EST, which is only Indiana at the moment)
THERE IS NO FREE BANDWITH ... The market will decide how much IP bandwith is worth. If there is too much supply then the $$$ people/companies are willing to pay goes down. Then there will be fewer companies willing to go into the business untill the supply goes down and the value goes up. The engineeers "taking over" the NOC are giving away free bandwith and thereby compounding the problem. The best thing that could happen to the internet is for companies to go out of business and take the bandwith off the market.
- Things are the way they are because they're coded that way -
...until clients find alternative solutions.
Mind you, KPN (which owns 40% of KPNQWest shares) has several Really Big Contracts with rather big companies, such as Schiphol Airport (which also has a very big hosting colo), guaranteeing that the network will ALWAYS run, or they'll have to pay the damages of breaking their contract.
So, as long as 'cost to keep the network running' < 'cost to piss off biggest customers REAL good', the network will keep running.
You can check this article (in Dutch), which says at least the Belgian network will keep running. Short translation of the article: employees where working for free to keep the network up and running, now they have a temporary contract for a few weeks, guaranteeing them they'll get paid if they keep the network running.
Every expression is true, for a given value of 'true'
the bandwidth served by Ebone can be absorbed by other mainstream ISP, and this is good.
The DNS routing tables can find new routes easily, but for such a massive redefinition of the routes we can expect up to 2 days of trouble. During the weekend probably all the machines connected (at some level) with EBone will experience problems.
During the next week all us (european) will tell what had happened. I hope nothing serious.
667 The Neighbour of the Beast
That's in little more than an hour time.
Well, if you call our perfect communication possibilities shoddy, you yourself must live in a garbage can, stupid American.
I think that says it all, really.
The internet is coming off its "high" from the late 90's, and is in the hangover stage. It will get over the hangover, swear off alc^M^M^M unrealistic spending on stupid ideas, and return to existance as a much more healthy mature Internet.
The bubble burst, and is coming back down to where it should be.
-Pete
Soccer Goal Plans
... it's happenings like this which will further people seeking wireles and alternative "nets". These big bottlenecks run by the so called "backbone" providers are still that-bottlenecks that can poof on a company's whim or "because" or from actual governmental interference.
We NEED total wireless somehow, and distributed connectivity and direct connections.
One of the original cool ideas of arpanet was to route around chokepoints that had poofed.
The ultimate goal then should be every computer is both a router and a server/client, and be wireless. Copper, fiber-whatever--all good stuff that works, but it's VULNERABLE, COMPLICATED AND EXPENSIVE. How many times have we heard of the e-vile backhoe monster "taking down" this or that? And now "business".
The last mile should be ALL the miles, and it should be as wireless as possible and there should be a way to simply use some software to do this, rather than the conglomeration of hardware and software crap that is needed to "access" the net and going through a slew of middlemen.. I want my personal box to "access" the net, and NOT have to go through an ISP, and them in turn through another and another. That's caveman stuff now, and NO reason for it, not really, not from a tech standpoint. If I had to choose, I'd much rather have a total access wireless net that didn't have these hard wired chokepoints abnd middlemen involved, even if that meant a bandwith restriction of some sort. We all need to be wireless servers and routers, not just client/consumers. I think the tradeoffs would be fantastic.
This rocks, let's sell all hospitals, roads and all other infra structure to companies who will thanks to the competition make the RIGHT(tm) decission
quote: "According to information gathered by the group, the three executives awarded themselves ten-fold salary and bonus increases in May 2001, which were kept secret till the day after the sale of GTS's assets was announced. The three received a total of $21m (£14.7m) in 2001, a sum that amounted to 52 percent of the stock value of the company at the time, said Kaplan. By comparison, Enron's much criticized "loyalty bonuses" only amounted to a few percent of its value."
No Zen is good zen
They had moved to Microsoft IIS recently - I guess this wasn't the best decission...?
PHB: That's it, money gone, shut down the ebone.
NETOP: Right on cap'n, shutting down ebone now...
PHB: Thank you.
NETOP: Slight problem, the guy that knows the router config to stop it working left, he was made redundant last week.
PHB: Ah, can't we just switch them off?
NETOP: No can do cap'n, no remote power off for security reasons.
PHB: So we need somebody to go out to site and switch all the routers off?
NETOP: That's what i'm telling you captain. These CISCO's just work so well, and without the guy who knows how to configure them to stop working we can't shut the network down.
PHB: OK, how many sites is that?
NETOP: About 23,239
PHB: Ok, get onto field maintenance.
NETOP: Slight problem, they were all made redundant last week.
PHB: Anyone fancy a pint?
Could be that the broadband market has just really kicked off in the last year or so. Think of all those new boxes, on ADSL & Cable lines, with open relays...
I wonder if anybody would sell infrastructure which is in the public interest, like streets, motor highways etc. to any company without thoroughly checking their ability to handle the obligation, or introduce regulations to them so that its guranteed the whole thing wont fail at some time and harm the public... So, since the internet has become an infrastructure of comparable importance, how can this happen? How can a single gigantomaniac company screw the european internet community that badly? Where is the control?
This is unbelievable, I'll do like that other poster and scream in anger about the "freedom" of irresponsible companies to screw up importants things...
I feel sorry for whomever's server that website is running on because now it's crawling like a stuck pig on its way to the slaughterhouse.
Runestar
BGP statistics pertaining to KPNQwest AS286 also, keep your eye on NANOGfor any info related to the impact of the shutdown.
According to this article (in Dutch only) Belgian unions (their members) are not going to shutdown the NOC in Hoeilaart(B).
They have come to an agreement with the curators. The curators have offered 40 employees a 5 week contract so the NOC can stay in operation with a skeleton crew. Employees of other NOCs ( 200 in total) around Europe were offered similar contracts.
It will probably be a 5 week long last breath.
Sjaak.
Yesterday (thursday) I heared someone say on the news that they found some investors and got enough money to live through this month.
That leaves them with roughly two weeks to find a real solution. The bottom line stays the same. They have to find a lot of money somewhere.
The strange thing is that announcement was made on th 6 o'clock news and the press release is from 5 o'clock.
Privacy is terrorism.
Talk about mixing metaphors
Yeek Gads, I wish that I had the chutzpah to name my company EBone. Imagine what you could do with that domain name...
.jpg culled from a TGP listing on the top of the CD, (step unknown), PROFIT!
1- Sell femurs ONLINE!
2- Get rich off of chewy naugahyde treats and have a sock-puppet dog as a mascot. Then get your panties in a bunch, have a HUGE ego trip, then sue NBC for DARING having a show that runs a comedy piece with a lookalike-sock puppet dog.
3- Break into Bill Gates' private subeterranean warehouse/Fortress of Pain and liberate the Elephant Man's real bones. Turn around and sell them back to him through EBone.com, make a small fortune.
4- Set up your own Linux distro, slap a
5- Derive a line of "vegetarian steaks" Say that they're like, made of textured tofu or some shit, implant a E-shaped "bone" composed of plastic therin, sell to vegetarians, watch them keel over and die because their guts have been made pathetic and WEAK from years of digesting food that they weren't intended to. Laugh menacingly while twisting your waxed moustache.
6- I dunno, turn it into your one-stop dicklicking emporium? It's not like the name is indicitave or anything?
Why is it when I hit ^R that ZSH calls me a cocksucker?
Trusted Computing FAQ | Free Dawit Isaak!
You traveling through time again, superpeach?
They are still up now because they have around 40 minutes to go now which is 40 minutes after your post.
If you are going to get on someone for being wrong, at least try to get your facts right.
I've been doing traceroutes , and about 30 mins ago i saw the following:
4 faste0-0-rtr13.Sofia.0rbitel.net (195.24.32.13) 6 ms
5 Orbitel-BTCNET.btc-net.bg (212.39.66.137) 8 ms
6 S5-1-0.PASAR2.Pastourelle.opentransit.net (193.251.248.85) 44 ms
7 P0-0.PASBB2.Pastourelle.opentransit.net (193.251.128.81) 1002 ms
8 P13-0.PASCR2.Pastourelle.opentransit.net (193.251.241.169) 2619 ms
9 P11-0.PASCR1.Pastourelle.opentransit.net (193.251.241.97) 2674 ms
and so on... looks like a lot of things moved in opentransit... Here's the trace from the other direction:
8 P3-0.NYKCR3.New-york.opentransit.net (193.251.248.110) 13 ms
9 P11-0.NYKCR2.New-york.opentransit.net (193.251.241.217) 16 ms
10 P4-0.PASCR1.Pastourelle.opentransit.net (193.251.241.133) 100 ms
11 P12-0.PASCR2.Pastourelle.opentransit.net (193.251.241.98) 100 ms
12 P7-0.PASBB2.Pastourelle.opentransit.net (193.251.241.170) 100 ms
13 P8-0-0.PASAR2.Pastourelle.opentransit.net (193.251.128.82) 2682 ms
14 Btc.GW.opentransit.net (193.251.248.86) 2701 ms
Let's hope they'll sort it out in the next 3-4 days.
Europe - "The Final Countdown"
What were the skies like when you were young?
The Belgian Government, either unilaterally or on the behalf of the European Union, should simply take this NOC over. Nationalize it. The backbone is too important to let anyone just pull the plug on it. Some things are just too important to be left to greedy businessmen. Kudos to the former employees who have kept the network up as volunteers because it was neccesary and the right thing to do.
The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
Hopefully this will lead to EVEN MORE CONSOLIDATION, which is exactly what this industry needs.
I suppose this means the KPNQwest Traveller service will also be disbanded which personally effects even more people.
http://www.kpnqwest.com/html/frames.html
Usually ISP NOCs have pretty decent pipes.
They could DoS slashdot to easily should they dislike being slashdotted.
"EBoned"
Call (206) 338-5780 COLLECT for information about a genuine BA, BS, MA, MS, MBA, or Ph.D.
What exactly did the poster mean by "chinese sense"? Seems a little racist to me. Glad slashdot posted it anyway!
The Ebone network hasn't been shut down. I'm a pround Ebone customer, and our network is properly wor
{{.sig}}
I dunno, I think there should be a government bailout of something like this.
No. No. No.
If the infrastructure is really that critical (like a country's highway system is), then the government should nationalize the backbone and make it available to competing ISPs under identical terms (i.e. actually allow competition and prevent vertical monopolies leveraged from physical monopolies over last mile cable and critical backbone links from forming).
If it isn't that important, then they should simply stand aside and let these companies go belly up, with all the consiquences that entails.
In no way should an existing, unsuccessful commercial enterprise be propped up by government: either the free market works, or there is no free market (read: monopoly), in which case the underlying structural cause of the monopoly (if any, in this case perhaps the copper, esp. if last-mile copper is involved) should be nationalized, and the market opened up so it can operate freely, with competition.
Bailouts are the worst of both possible worlds: government intervention and expenditure of public funds AND private corporate control with no public accountability (beyond their stockholders, if they happen to be traded publicly).
When Northpoint went under with no warning it sucked (we were off the net for 2 days due to that fiasco, and NSI didn't fix our DNS for 10 days), but even there a government bailout would have been wrong.
Nationalizing Ameritech's last mile of copper, so that Ameritech wouldn't be able to maliciously leverage that monopoly to drive competing DSL providers like Northpoint out of business, on the other hand, would have been a reasonable response. Unfortunately the ayndroids of the far right have managed to convince a large percentage of people that free enterprise is a panacea in all contexts and the only good governance is no governance. Nonsense, of course, as anyone can see (just try applying that logic to public highways and try to imagine the economic impact of Road Monopolies), but it is a widespread and in many respects crippling meme that has infected much of America.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
It's a few minutes past 17:00 CET and I'm up & ru
- BGP router identifier XXX, local AS number XXX
After 11am (US/Eastern):BGP table version is 15846057, main routing table version 15846057
114307 network entries and 335645 paths using 23170999 bytes of memory
58200 BGP path attribute entries using 3260264 bytes of memory
50933 BGP AS-PATH entries using 1314460 bytes of memory
1 BGP community entries using 24 bytes of memory
15 BGP route-map cache entries using 240 bytes of memory
80699 BGP filter-list cache entries using 968388 bytes of memory
Dampening enabled. 271 history paths, 458 dampened paths
3 received paths for inbound soft reconfiguration
BGP activity 396089/9002885 prefixes, 4768424/4432779 paths, scan interval 15 secs
Neighbor V AS MsgRcvd MsgSent TblVer InQ OutQ Up/Down State/PfxRcd
xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx 4 1239 6691013 160774 15845983 0 0 2d07h 113727
xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx 4 701 5769835 160662 15846057 0 0 7w0d 110579
xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx 4 2548 5018626 160732 15846051 0 0 04:34:35 110994
- BGP router identifier XXX, local AS number XXX
That's about 170 routes lost. That doesn't look too bad. However, that could be 170BGP table version is 15847879, main routing table version 15847879
114302 network entries and 335626 paths using 23169830 bytes of memory
58207 BGP path attribute entries using 3266312 bytes of memory
51007 BGP AS-PATH entries using 1317248 bytes of memory
1 BGP community entries using 24 bytes of memory
15 BGP route-map cache entries using 240 bytes of memory
80841 BGP filter-list cache entries using 970092 bytes of memory
Dampening enabled. 759 history paths, 578 dampened paths
3 received paths for inbound soft reconfiguration
BGP activity 396098/9003023 prefixes, 4768452/4432826 paths, scan interval 15 secs
Neighbor V AS MsgRcvd MsgSent TblVer InQ OutQ Up/Down State/PfxRcd
xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx 4 1239 6691412 160782 15847825 0 0 2d07h 113560
xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx 4 701 5770381 160670 15847879 0 0 7w0d 110410
xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx 4 2548 5019004 160740 15847859 0 0 04:42:31 110823
From the register
KPNQwest's Ebone to shut atVolunteers who've been manning KPNQwest's pan-European Ebone broadband network for the last eight days say they will shut it down today if no buyer is found.
........
......
The Ebone network is estimated to carry 25 per cent of European Internet traffic with some reports warning of a "meltdown" if the network is switched off.
Cruise TT
My other comments:
50% of European Internet traffic carried via Ebone+KPNQwest is way of an overstatement. I don't believe it's that much.
Also, lot of the European daugther companies of KPNQwest, such as
Eastern European division has not filled bankruptcy protection yet, and have their connectivity backed up via other IP transit providers. (The Czech KNPQwest+GTS use BT and SprintLink via GTS Hungary.)
Right now, it's 17.13 and Ebone still seems to be alive, even in Beligum and Netherlands:
3 inway.k.telia.net (193.45.9.49) 7.994 ms 1.361 ms 1.428 ms
4 213.248.76.153 (213.248.76.153) 9.360 ms 1.657 ms 8.429 ms
5 ffm-new-b2-pos1-1.telia.net (213.248.76.141) 20.434 ms 25.261 ms 26.440 ms
6 hbg-bb1-pos3-0-0.telia.net (213.248.64.173) 46.174 ms 50.120 ms 45.800 ms
7 kbn-bb1-pos2-0-0.telia.net (213.248.64.29) 51.553 ms 57.683 ms 52.923 ms
8 adm-bb1-pos0-1-0.telia.net (213.248.64.18) 63.009 ms 69.511 ms 63.573 ms
9 adm-b1-pos1-0.telia.net (213.248.72.2) 56.644 ms 54.084 ms 54.100 ms
10 r4-PO3-1.Ledn-KQ1.NL.KPNQwest.net (134.222.249.77) 66.515 ms 67.437 ms 69.472 ms
11 r3-PO6-0.ledn-KQ1.NL.kpnqwest.net (134.222.229.122) 68.316 ms 67.024 ms 72.428 ms
12 r1-Se0-1-0.ledn-KQ1.NL.KPNQwest.net (134.222.230.5) 56.098 ms 58.623 ms 56.102 ms
13 nlams0605-tc-p6-0.kpnqwest.net (213.174.71.21) 57.973 ms 57.703 ms 58.233 ms
14 nlams0910-tc-r5-0.kpnqwest.net (213.174.69.179) 56.918 ms 59.852 ms 60.050 ms
15 bebru0421-tc-p3-0.kpnqwest.net (213.174.70.113) 60.133 ms 59.639 ms 60.028 ms
16 bebru408-nc-r1-0.be.kpnqwest.net (213.174.69.107) 75.493 ms 73.059 ms 73.376 ms
17 beXPL001-1-s0.cust.kpnqwest.net (213.181.136.101) 77.309 ms * 75.688 ms
2 rib-off.inway.cz (212.24.132.65) 8.421 ms 0.993 ms 1.131 ms
3 inway.k.telia.net (193.45.9.49) 8.760 ms 8.802 ms 1.217 ms
4 213.248.76.153 (213.248.76.153) 6.470 ms 1.763 ms 9.104 ms
5 ffm-new-b2-pos1-1.telia.net (213.248.76.141) 28.248 ms 24.308 ms 20.823 ms
6 213.248.68.86 (213.248.68.86) 20.762 ms 25.753 ms 26.480 ms
7 r5-PO1-2.Ffm-IXA1.DE.KPNQwest.net (134.222.249.89) 45.512 ms 40.712 ms 39.720 ms
8 defra0228-tc-r12-0.kpnqwest.net (213.174.68.17) 47.529 ms 38.075 ms 41.792 ms
9 nlams0921-tc-p4-0.kpnqwest.net (213.174.70.90) 51.055 ms 46.508 ms 52.263 ms
10 nlams0910-tc-r5-0.kpnqwest.net (213.174.69.179) 38.279 ms * 44.290 ms
...it seems like that one went down Monday night already ( Graph).
25 Minutes past the 17:00 CET deadline and the Internet Traffic Report - Europe doesn't show a dip of network router reachability. Oonly problems are the listed Ebone router in Frankfurt that went down 3 days ago, and some Global-One routers in Portugal that went down a few hours ago, and one TPnet router in Poland, which dropped traffic moments ago.
I'm a Telecommunications Engineer from Spain. Last week I conversated with an important directive of Telefónica and he explained the biggest problems telcos are having now:
Just an example: last year a client wanted a 2 Mbps link from London to Cadiz (in the South coast of Spain). It was cheaper for the client to directly contract a 622 Mbps link with a carrier than to contract a 2 Mbps link with a telco. Why? Because there are too many carriers competing, so they sell under price (expecting not to fail) and the result of this is they are bringing bankrupcy to themselves and to the rest of carriers and telcos.
This is why KPNQwest is filing for bankrupcy: too much competence, too much carriers (including KPNQwest) selling bandwidth under price (just trying to survive).
In a few years, there'll be very few telcos and carriers in Europe (and USA), but they'll be very big companys. Good or bad? I don't know, we'll see.
Can anyone tell me why the countdown timer is going *UP*?
......
When I refresh the page the timer is going in reverse it seems
The Guardian carried this story. It began with the astonishing statement: "The internet in Europe is facing its first major test today..." -- so evidently, we've somehow survived over here since 1970 without any kind of a "major test".
GROGGS: alive and well and living in
it's even in english: http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/data/jk-31. 05.02-005/
FYI: Internet Traffic Report Show the router "defra229-tc.ebone.ne" as down.
Stay tunned for more red lights...
L.
The shashdot article says 1700 CET, which is 5 pm, not 7 pm!
I'm currently using CEST (Central European Summer Time?), and my computer says that 18:00 CEST is 16:00 UTC.
If that's any help...
UUnet (europe's part of WorldCom's backbones, and the owner of English ISP Pipex) has a huge amount of redundancy in Europe and to the rest of the world.
If KPNQWest carry 1/2 the internet traffic in Europe, UUnet carries at least a 1/3.
No idea why KPNQWest do so well, anyway, WorldCom's latency/packet-loss figures are much lower.
I connect via JANET in the UK and haven't noticed any delays yet (17:55CET). Still, I wonder what will happen when all the dial-up users connect (the phone charges get cheaper at 6PM BST, 7PM CET).
Whilst we have been aware of this possibility for some time now our networks have been designed to take account of this type of event. Naturally, given the issues with KPNQwest, we have recently confirmed that our network can accommodate the loss of Ebone.
We estimate that about 5% of our traffic is currently routed by Ebone and that is mostly to other European sites.
When or if Ebone is turned off we expect traffic to reroute via other connections in London and Amsterdam.
We believe it is unlikely that there are any other networks connected exclusively to Ebone, so we do not expect any destinations to become unavailable in the event that Ebone closes.
In the event that Ebone close it will take time for traffic patterns across Europe to settle down, however we expect the effect will be limited to some traffic following less than optimal routes and occasional hot spots of congestion.
We will of course be monitoring our network for adverse effects in the event that Ebone closes and we will carry out any necessary maintenance should we find such hot spots that do not resolve themselves."
traceroute www.strato.de (or a tracert if you're under Windows). Seems to be OK at least for now and we're one hour behind their possible shutdown time.
Bye egghat.
-- "As a human being I claim the right to be widely inconsistent", John Peel
The Communications infrastructure should be nationalized like the Federal Highway System is, and the Department of Transportation should be given the expanded role of supervising that and the other transportation infrastructures under the gise of Department of Infrastructure.
The Feds will establish standards, like they did with the Interstate System and provide funds for it's upkeep and expansion. At the point where you leave the Federal Backbone, the private sector and local governments can take over, like it does with private streets or highways.
The Feds will decide on open protocals like TCP/IP, and furthermore, I think that there should be a minimum amount of fibre should be established so that whenever road construction or repair is underway, more fibre will be run in that right of way.
1) If an ISP connected to Ebone you would hope that had an alternative connection to another backbone provider otherwise they were a naff ISP and deserve everything they get. Same goes if you were a customer and running your essential business services over one provider... tut tut.
2) There is massive overcapacity in most telcos networks as they all bought into the hype 2 years ago and have too much fibre. If it's built into the networks and routed... no problems.
3) Who cares whether your traffic from UK to Germany or whatever goes the the states first and is 18 hops instead of 6... how quick is it?... is it lagging?... or is it actually still a useable network.
Worse failures on the net have happened before... that said, I suspect the time when they actually turn it off will be a bit shaky. Expect things to calm down over the next day or so. Nice of them to do it friday so everything should be fine monday for all those business users.
I think you meant "neo-conservatism" - they are the ones selling off the prisons to make money to build more prisons.
But of course we prefer to call them "fascist Reaganauts" on this side of the pond. Since they have absolutely nothing to do with conservation, or new ideas for that matter - they are just corporate drone dittoheads - "neo" and "conservative" are just Orwellian newspeak null voders.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/business/newsid_2 044000/2044911.stm
Not that this is going to make a big frickin difference to E-Bone...
A little E-Viagra would keep the E-Bone up.
See the update at Heise (google translated). Or use the original in German.
Have a nice weekend.
Bye egghat.
-- "As a human being I claim the right to be widely inconsistent", John Peel
John Walker's site, fourmilab.ch, is still up and running. fourmilab's ISP is KPNQWest, so I'd have to assume it's still running at this point. As the timestamp on this note says, its' well passed 1700 CET.
My journal has hot
eh? ;)
if you change 1.5hrs (which I said) into minutes, you get 90mins. You say 40 + 40, which is 80mins. We both used words like about and around to indicate our values are not exact. What are you on about? all your post proves is you dont know how many minutes are in an hour
traceroute to www.microsoft.akadns.net (207.46.197.113), 30 hops max, 38 byte packets
1 192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1) 0.489 ms 0.282 ms 0.125 ms
2 ip212-226-*-*.adsl.kpnqwest.fi (212.226.*.*) 0.941 ms 0.924 ms 0.875 ms
3 co1-Fa0-0-KQ1.Hel.FI.KPNQwest.net (212.226.253.1) 7.655 ms 7.773 ms 8.015 ms
4 r2-Ge1-2-0-100-KQ1.Hel.FI.KPNQwest.net (212.226.253.14) 8.109 ms 9.383 ms 8.097 ms
5 r3-Se1-0-0-0.Sthm-KQ1.SE.KPNQwest.net (134.222.119.234) 15.505 ms 16.291 ms 16.217 ms
6 r1-Se1-1-0.0.hmbg-KQ1.DE.kpnqwest.net (134.222.230.149) 33.069 ms 33.293 ms 32.848 ms
7 r1-Se0-2-0.0.ffm-KQ1.DE.kpnqwest.net (134.222.230.109) 41.762 ms 41.708 ms 40.848 ms
8 r1-Se0-3-0.0.ledn-KQ1.NL.kpnqwest.net (134.222.230.13) 44.251 ms 43.529 ms 43.273 ms
9 r20-Gi0-0-0.Asd-KQ6.NL.KPNQwest.net (134.222.96.110) 43.892 ms 45.664 ms 43.990 ms
10 UNKNOWN.KPNQwest.net (134.222.249.118) 45.033 ms 45.174 ms 45.007 ms
11 zcr2-ge-2-0-0.Amsterdamamt.cw.net (208.173.220.130) 44.583 ms * 47.331 ms
12 bcr2-so-2-0-0.Amsterdam.cw.net (208.173.209.197) 46.189 ms 43.965 ms 46.527 ms
13 dcr1-loopback.Washington.cw.net (206.24.226.99) 149.072 ms 133.766 ms 133.792 ms
14 agr4-so-0-0-0.Washington.cw.net (206.24.238.62) 133.727 ms 133.032 ms *
15 acr1-loopback.Seattle.cw.net (208.172.82.61) 197.099 ms 217.579 ms 195.529 ms
16 bpr1.SeattleSwitchDesign.cw.net (208.172.82.7) 197.339 ms 197.426 ms 195.313 ms
etc...
Still going through the good old EuroRings network. I'm a little suspicious about the UNKNOWN.KPNQwest.net, but my connection is fully functional.
(emphasis mine)
PRESS RELEASE
We are pleased to announce the hard-line strategy of the Union-led volunteers at Ebone in Belgium appears to have finally reaped rewards. Sufficient funds have been provided to maintain operations throughout Europe. This vital capital will be used to cover operational costs for 2 weeks. This includes the salaries for 200 people, of which 40 people will be from the Belgian Operations Centre. During this time, we are very confident of reaching a positive outcome to the negotiations which are continuing to find a buyer for the Ebone network.
It can therefore be confirmed that the now passed deadline of 17.00 C.E.T. for a network shutdown, will not be executed.
A further press release will follow in due course.
Employees of Ebone, with their Unions
Resp.editors. Henri Jean Ruttiens, secretary BBTK Setca
Ben Debognies secretary LBC
Hendrik Vermeersch, secretary BBTK Setca
PRESS RELEASE
We are pleased to announce the hard-line strategy of the Union-led volunteers at Ebone in Belgium appears to have finally reaped rewards. Sufficient funds have been provided to maintain operations throughout Europe. This vital capital will be used to cover operational costs for 2 weeks. This includes the salaries for 200 people, of which 40 people will be from the Belgian Operations Centre. During this time, we are very confident of reaching a positive outcome to the negotiations which are continuing to find a buyer for the Ebone network.
It can therefore be confirmed that the now passed deadline of 17.00 C.E.T. for a network shutdown, will not be executed.
A further press release will follow in due course.
Employees of Ebone, with their Unions
Resp.editors. Henri Jean Ruttiens, secretary BBTK Setca
I just visited eBone. It seems this article is out of date already! Follow the link and you'll find this message:
Important announcement NO SHUT DOWN - more details to follow (-:
Judging by the happy ascii at the end, this can mean only good things for our friends across the pond!
Do it doug.
Quoting ZDNet:
Either that's a very, very long time -OR- Taco's moonlighting.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Sounds to me like a great opportunity to pick up some neato hardware at a great price...
Bankruptcy auction anyone?
--Huck
"Just Smile and Nod." --Huck
How much does it cost to run a NOC of this size?
Near as I can tell, the recurring costs are power, data pipes, a building lease, and people. The Ciscos may have a maintenance agreement, but they've mostly already been paid for. Of these, the people are obviously the most expensive component, but how many people does it really take when so much is automated?
Like I said, it's a stupid question...
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/audio/38076000/rm/_380 76310_kinsey2.ram
Helloooo-oh. Anybody home?
(I know I'm arriving late, sorry)
KPN is Dutch.
QWest is American.
KPNQwest is a joint venture of the two, operating from the UK.
The e-bone center is geographically located in Belgium because that's where all those fibers come together, but it isn't in Belgian hands.
Belgium has been the victim of similar situations several times in the recent past.
Example one is Sabena, the air traffic company: S. was in financial trouble, but could have survived. Majority of stock gets sold to SwissAir because they promise to invest heavily, SwissAir leeches company dry of the last $$ instead in attempt to save themselves from bancruptcy (an attempt that succeeded, btw) and lets S. go bankrupt.
Example two: Telenet, a cable ISP currently in severe trouble. Telenet was 100% Belgian and worked. Company gets sold to Callahan Associates, Callahan at the same time acquires the physical cabling Telenet was using from its proprietors (meaning all cable TV distribution networks in half of Belgium are now in Callahan's hands, telenet itself only owned the fiber backbone). Callahan never pays for the network, leaving telenet with the bill. Telenet hence in big trouble, and the reputation the cable TV network had of being (technically) the best in Europe will probably go down too in the near future, because of lack of maintenance.
Shortly after the takeover, Telenet changes external connection providers for no apparent reason (could it be that the new ones are Callahan-owned and charge ludicrous amounts?)
Sounds like another case of sucking dry to me.
Example three (the way I see it): E-bone. KPNQwest expects problems, decides to acquire E-Bone because it is still making money. Turns out to be not making enough to save KPNQwest, E-Bone is dragged down with it.
I don't know, but I think if the company I work for (100% in Belgian hands) would be sold after this, I'd quit the same day.