*nods* I know optical transport can be difficult to track down, but they had admitted to a faulty card, then said they weren't going to do anything because it hadn't faulted again.
Yeah, it's probably just being cheap. Well, kinda. I mean they've also said the card was already delivered, just needed installation. ----- Mike Hammett Intelligent Computing Solutions Midwest Internet Exchange The Brothers WISP ----- Original Message ----- From: "Dave Cohen" <craetd...@gmail.com> To: "Mike Hammett" <na...@ics-il.net> Cc: "NANOG" <nanog@nanog.org> Sent: Tuesday, August 1, 2023 1:37:47 PM Subject: Re: Flapping Transport At a previous $dayjob, we employed a guy that was a bona fide optical guru. He had effectively memorized the 400+ page Nortel 6500 operating guide, and some of the hardware vendors would call him for advice when their TACs couldn't figure a problem out. Allegedly, he was the person who discovered that the early generations of OTU-4 line deployments were susceptible to problems across cable in OPGW space because of the Faraday Effect. On the rare occasion when he couldn't diagnose a problem he'd respond with something like "voodoo doesn't always work". To your question, it isn't acceptable but it is likely pretty normal. Flapping isn't often a particularly straightforward issue to diagnose and/or resolve in optical networks (especially ones where there's regen or in-line amplification), and most transport providers don't employ guys like that that can figure it out. And even then, voodoo doesn't always work. Your hope is that whatever the "card issue" was was a localized event rather than something that's now systemic, and while I don't really understand why they wouldn't take a maintenance window to replace the cards anyway (aside from being cheap, which is almost definitely the reason), if they're not seeing continued issues (and of course you'd have to trust them that they're not), it's equally likely as not that the problem has in fact resolved. On Tue, Aug 1, 2023 at 2:21 PM Mike Hammett < na...@ics-il.net > wrote: I have a wave transport vendor that suffered issues twice about ten days apart, causing my link to flap a bunch. I put in a ticket on the second set of occurrences. I was told that there was a card issue identified and would be notified when the replacement happened. Ticket closed. Three weeks later, I opened a new ticket asking for the status. The new card arrived the next day, but since no more flaps were happening, the card would not be replaced. Ticket closed. A) It doesn't seem like they actually did anything to fix the circuit. B) They admitted a problem and sent a new card. C) They later decided to not do anything. Is that normal? Is that acceptable? To avoid issues flapping causes, I disabled that circuit until repaired, but it seems like they're not going to do anything and I only know that because I asked. ----- Mike Hammett Intelligent Computing Solutions Midwest Internet Exchange The Brothers WISP -- - Dave Cohen craetd...@gmail.com
