🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <4b5sda$2q9@felix.junction.net>,
Michael Dillon <michael@okjunc.junction.net> wrote:
>This is to laugh! BC-Tel made the same mistake of connecting to ANS in 
>the USA, unlike the *FAST* and well-run backbone operated by MCI which 
>CA*Net connects to. But BC-Tel was smart enough to dump that crappy ANS 
>connection and haul a DS3 down to MCI in California. Now B.C. companies 
>can get the best Internet connectivity in North America from their choice 
>of two companies, BCNet (a CA*Net affiliate) or BC-Tel (a Stentor group 
>member).

This is an odd comment.  From these

> 6  border2-hssi1-0.Seattle.mci.net (204.70.53.5)  17.597 ms  16.503 ms  16.714ms
>11  pacbell-nap-atm.SanFrancisco.mci.net (204.70.158.106)  35.211 ms  34.707 ms 33.301 ms
>16  t3-1.cnss88.Seattle.t3.ans.net (140.222.88.2)  54.055 ms  52.071 ms  50.542ms

it appears to take about 17 ms to get from Seattle to San Francisco on MCI's
network and 17 ms to get back to Seattle on ANS' network, so neither seem
more capable of exceeding the speed of light.  Both ANS and MCI have DS3
backbones, I doubt if MCI's DS3's are *FAST*er than the one's ANS buys from
MCI, nor more reliable.  Is this another intuition thing?

MCI does have more DS3 circuits in their network, but they also have a
lot more really big, annoying customers so they run a lot closer to
overload in more places than ANS does.  MCI uses Cisco routers, which are
known to have some difficult-to-deal-with design flaws which make them a
bit unreliable in hard situations, while ANS uses routers which, while
limited in expandability and future lifetime, are probably more stable
and problem-free in support of a T3 service than any other high-end
provider.  ANS does run with silly routing policy, which means there are
probably a few places you can't reach from there, while MCI is more pragmatic
about this.  ANS has longer corporate experience running a backbone than
MCI, the latter is a relative newcomer to the industry.

So why is MCI amazing while ANS is crappy?  Sounds like a toss-up to me.

Dennis Ferguson

Disclaimer: I'm not without biases about both companies, I wrote the
routing software ANS' routers run and participated in the design and
engineering of MCI's original network and two expansions since.  Flaws
in all of these are probably mine.