The Major

Category: Networking

  • Sonic.net Continues to Rock

    I couldn’t have picked a better ISP…

    So Jasper plans to roll out his own equipment, providing residential Internet access at speeds of up to 24 Mbps — nearly four times the speed of what Comcast and AT&T currently offer on their next-generation equipment. And he plans to offer that service not only to some of its 32,000 customers, but also to other small ISPs across the state. These other ISPs will be able to buy wholesale access from Sonic, replacing AT&T’s traditional role.

    Full article here.

    Basically Sonic.net is becoming their own phone company so they can’t get screwed over by AT&T and the FCC. Rock, rock on.

  • ISO vs. IETF

    When networks became large enough to outgrow distance vector routing protocols such as RIPv2, and the networking community wanted something non-proprietary to fill the role, Intermediate System to Intermediate System (IS-IS) was created by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) had historically put forth such Internet/networking standards. Later, Open Shortest Path First, an internal link-state routing protocol very similar to IS-IS, was created by the IETF. As explained in OSPF and IS-IS: Choosing an IGP for Large-Scale Networks by Jeff Doyle, one main reason for OSPF’s creation seemed to be resentment at having their responsibilities taken over by the ISO:

    One camp looked at IS-IS and decided that it made little sense to develop a new link state protocol when one was already at hand. Why not just extend IS-IS to support TCP/IP? The other camp did not want a protocol that was controlled by an outside body, particularly one as rigidly bureaucratic as the ISO. The IETF approach was proven and familiar, so why not develop an open, nonproprietary version of the ARPANET’s SPF—OSPF—to better coexist with the open TCP/IP? A visceral resentment of the ISO’s arrogance in dismissing TCP/IP also fed the second camp; IS-IS was unacceptable simply because it was an ISO protocol.

    Because of their egos, I now have considerably more work to do in my studying for the BSCI exam.

    Sweet.

  • ARPANET Outage in 1980

    I just finished reading about an ARPANET-wide outage on October 27, 1980: RFC 789

    It is a nice story for us computer nerds.

  • Routing Protocols Comparison Table

    While studying tonight I found that I didn’t have a good listing of several characteristics of routing protocols to study from. So I made a table for studying, and released it under the GFDL:

    Comparison of Routing Protocols

    You will need to be able to read OpenDocument Text Documents to view the table. Open Office can be used to view such documents.

  • Secret Pictures of Phone Switches

    WARNING! Do not click on the below link if you are not a geek!

    Secret pictures of phone switches.

    I was studying ISDN when I read about these phone switches, and just had to see what they looked like. What a find. I can’t explain how great that is.

  • Observations from a Networking Nerd

    Here are a few acronyms, and what a networking nerd thinks when he hears them, compared to a normal person:

    LAPD
    Normal Person – Los Angeles Police Department
    Networking Nerd – Link Access Procedures, D Channel

    DDR
    Normal Person – Dance Dance Revolution
    Networking Nerd – Dial on Demand Routing

    ATM
    Normal Person – Automated Teller Machine
    Networking Nerd – Asynchronous Transfer Mode

    In other news, I am really glad I am interested in this stuff, or else I would go nuts trying to study it.