🚀 go-pugleaf

Robert Marks (bobm@mummy.agsm.unsw.OZ.AU) wrote:

: Well, I can understand that and understand how the link is being taxed at
: peak periods, and how such periods must be becoming a larger proportion of
: the day, and how the growth of usership requires frequent upgrades in
: bandwidth of the link.  If Peter tells me that overloads result in
: connections dropping out, and not just delays in responses, then that's what
: I'm experiencing.

I should add that there has been some experimental audio and video being
transmitted over the Internet, including the AARNet-US link and the larger
capacity domestic Australian links. But given that the link is already
completely saturated (it runs at over 497K bits/sec, out of a theoretical
maximum of 512K bps, for around 10 hours a day) it's hard to imagine this
having a major effect on performance of other connections, but its effects
will be felt.

: I'm also experiencing the software on my machine at the
: USA end telling me that my Sydney machine is on an unreachable network from
: time to time (for a few seconds or minutes) and this occurs not just when
: people/students are active in east-coast Australia but in the period between
: 4:30 am - 8:00 am EAST on weekdays and on a Saturday morning less than a week
: before Christmas, when the load on the network might be lowest.  Is
: this due to the higher average load too?

This is a problem it might be possible to do something about. If you can note
exactly when and how long these problems ocurr, pass this information
to me and I will take it up with the appropriate US network operations people.
I will also need to know what your host name/address is in the US. If you
are capable of doing a traceroute from your US host to(wards) the Australian 
host then that would be useful too.

: To open a slightly different thread, even with double the bandwidth (in
: August) Australia's single link to the outside world is just that -- a single
: link -- which raises issues of reliability and robustness for me.  Is there
: any reason why instead of a single 1 Meg link we can't have two 512k links,
: so that if one has technical trouble, the whole thing doesn't fall over?

Chris covered the issues here. I should point out that the 512K link has 
been *very* reliable - there have been no outages caused by carrier problems
for months and months (yes I realise this is tempting fate ... :-). 

--
Peter Elford,                             e-mail: P.Elford@aarnet.edu.au
Network Co-ordinator                      phone: +61 6 249 3542
Australian Academic Research Network      fax:   +61 6 249 1369
c/o, Computer Services Centre             pager: +61 6 245 3035
Australian National University            post: GPO Box 1142     
Canberra, AUSTRALIA                             Canberra ACT 2601