Telkom - Verizon woes continue

I agree with mybroadband, it's not cool that say nothing about it ;)
 
I personally think this should be of great concern to the telecoms industry. The fact that it takes days (and even weeks) to resolve these issues is not good news.
 
rpm said:
I personally think this should be of great concern to the telecoms industry. The fact that it takes days (and even weeks) to resolve these issues is not good news.
Click to expand...

Today was rough, I became so irritated it's the only day in weeks for me where I would rather watch television than browse the net ;)

Let's hope they fix it.
 
If one were to speculate what is happening, it might be a combination of two things, namely, Telkom trying to assert that certain traffic is not peering, and refusing to upgrade peering as a result, and/or a tactic on the part of Telkom to muscle in on Verizon, in order to target Verizon customers by asserting that they will get a better service on the SAIX network.

If one were to look at Telkom's position, it would make business sense for Telkom to degrade peering with IS and Verizon, in order to try to induce Verizon and IS hosting customers to move to SAIX.

There may be a lot more than a simple bungle or Telkom dragging its heels due to incompetence.

If, hypothetically speaking, Telkom were engaging in strong-arm tactics against Verizon, it would make no sense for Verizon to give in, even though their customers would have to endure some pain as a result. If something like this were indeed the case, one would hope that Verizon's customers will stick by Verizon and support them through the pain.

Unfortunately, peering is a totally voluntary relationship. As a result, peering only works if both parties see benefit. If one party believes that somehow peering is detracting from revenue making potential, peering will often fall down.

If both Telkom and Verizon were mutually benefitting from peering, there would be no delays in peering upgrades. The fact that this is not the case would seem to indicate some tension between the parties...
 
Thanks for the insightful analysis of the situation Geoffr. While one certainly appreciates that supporting Verizon in this case is needed, it becomes an increasingly difficult exercise if Verizon does not want to communicate with the press (and possibly its customers) on what exactly is happening.

Some people I have spoken to are planning to migrate their services away from the Verizon CT based data centers, and I am sad to say we also fall into that category. Our main concern is to provide the best possible service to our visitors, and with more problems with the SAIX Verizon peering being anticipated we have little choice but to look at moving our servers…

If Verizon provided more clarity on the negotiation process and what exactly is happening our decision may have been different.
 
This peering problem is potentially affecting thousands of SA web sites since Hetzner makes use of Verizon.

One would hope that Hetzner would be placing lots of pressure on Verizon to get this resolved soonest.

What other options are out there?
 
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Could this problem be the reason I can't play TrackMania United Forever online?

Because it seems that other users (outside of CPT) can play online (connect to the master server(s) but those in CPT can't

I'm just wondering, cause out of all the issues, this makes sense now.
 
Don't you just love it!

All the technical mumbo-jumbo aside, imagine this happened anywhere else in the world. Actually, no, that's not possible - because if this situation was allowed to continue for more than 3 HOURS anywhere else, people would be summarily FIRED!
Remember a few months back when a dragging ship anchor tore up a fairly large piece of cable in the Mediterranean, which in turn knocked out large sections of Europe and the sub-continent - how long did it take them to sort that out. 1 DAY!!!

It's amazing the crap we put up with - but then I wouldn't be surprised if this is a Telkom issue solely, and they simply don't know how to sort it out because anyone who knew what was going on now works for a telecoms outfit in Dubai!
 
does anyone have any inside info or updates on the issue? this is getting seriously annoying and my 3G bill is rising every day i need to use the net for work :mad:
 
blunt said:
does anyone have any inside info or updates on the issue? this is getting seriously annoying and my 3G bill is rising every day i need to use the net for work :mad:
Click to expand...
There are indications that it may be fixed tonight. Will check tommorow morning to see if it is indeed fixed...
 
For the propellor heads....

I have looked up what peering means but cannot relate it back to this. Could someone please provide a layman's explanation of what the problem is?
 
@fivelza Peering is a term used to describe the routing of Internet traffic between ISPs. In this case it refers to local traffic, as in traffic originating in South Africa for South African hosted sites, etc. It is intended to keep local traffic from going overseas and back again, which can be rather expensive and have a higher latency (i.e. takes longer to load).

So in real layman terms it means that potentially users of say Telkom Internet (with their local Internet bandwidth ultimately provided by SAIX) cannot get to sites hosted by Verizon and its customers. One of them those hosting companies being Hetzner.

For a non-IT analogy, its like driving from Johannesburg to Pretoria via Cape Town because roads between Johannesburg and Pretoria are too narrow and are packed with taxis. :P

Does that explain it better?
 
Network notice detail

Start Date 2008-05-26 12:00:00
Resolved Date 2008-05-27 15:20:00
Status Resolved
Type Verizon/SAIX peering issues
Point of impact CPT and JHB
Symptoms experienced High latency and packet loss to websites and email hosted on web hosting servers in the Cape Town Data Centres. This is due to Verizon/SAIX peering issue experienced at the moment.
Cause of problem CRC errors
Estimated time of repair
Additional information Verizon is currently experiencing a problem with their peering link to SAIX which is caused by line errors. Telkom engineers are currently working on the problem.

Update
======
The line errors have cleared, however Verizon is now getting packet drops on the link. Telkom have arranged further testing on the link during midnight which will result in loss of connectivity during the testing period.

Update
======
Verizon has upgraded the peering link between themselves and Telkom. Further upgrades are also underway but this should provide immediate relief to the current situation.
Attending Telkom Engineers


Network notice detail

Start Date 2008-05-28 05:00:00
Resolved Date 2008-05-28 06:00:00
Status Maintenance
Type Maintenance: Core Network Upgrade - CPT1
Point of impact Cape Town Data Centre 1
Symptoms experienced Intermittent loss of connectivity during the maintenance period.
Cause of problem Core infrastructure upgrade
Estimated time of repair
Additional information The uplink between Hetzner and Verizon will be upgraded from 100Mb to 1Gb. Network connectivity may be interrupted during the failover process within the maintenance window.
Attending Verizon and Hetzner engineers

http://supportcentre.hetzner.co.za/index.php?action=network_notifications
 
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Looks like it has been resolved, i heard they upgraded the link from 130mbps to 180mbps
 
Is this still an issue? Not sure if this is what is causing my issues, but for the last couple of days I have been unable to access MyBB, Hetzner, or our company domain which is hosted with Hetzner. I use ADSL at home with an IS local account and a SAIX international account, using GateCrashers routing script on my Linksys router.
Surely using the script, all my routing to websites like MyBB and Hetzner should be routed through the local IS account? Is the peering problems between IS and Verizon as well?

Maybe the problem lies with my router and script somewhere :confused: But I can access most other sites and news server no problem...
 
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