Shipping hiccups, I2MM showfloor, and Nysernet IPv6

Rob Vietzke was in New York today finalizing some prep work for the Internet2 Member Meeting. We had hoped to have him run some fibers between the Level3 bulk panel toward Chicago and the Infinera, but the fibers we shipped to the wrong zip code. Apparently New York is so dense that it has exactly 5,768 zip codes. :-) That meant that the fibers didn't make it in time and we'll need to do remote hands tomorrow.

Ciena had some similar problems with their 10GigE cards that they sent for the installers over a week ago. Apparently they were off by one number on the zip code and they ended up 10 blocks away from where they were supposed to be. Oddly enough, they were delivered and signed for at this mythical address. Fortunately, the carrier was able to locate them and get them into the installer technicians' hands by the end of the day.

Had a bit of back and forth with Christian Todorov and Linda Winkler about the member meeting network. I'm attaching a diagram for fun, though the VLAN assignment has already changed and I now have the AS number of the showfloor. The legacy Abilene router will be connected to the network via it's existing MREN peering. The new Chicago router will have a layer2 cutthrough directly to the showfloor. So, by default the new router will be the default path to and from the showfloor (based on AS-path length). I'm not sure which way we want to go with that, but I think folks want to keep the legacy router as the primary link. So, I'll pad the AS toward the I2MM and let MEDs take over. We redistributed our IGP metrics into BGP MEDs. Since both routers will be advertising the same set of BGP routes, the showfloor will have two paths to Abilene connectors. Since the IGP metric on the new CHIC-NEWY circuit is still higher than the legacy Qwest Chicago to New York link, the only networks that will have a lower MED (and be preferred on the new router) will be those networks that are homed directly to one of the two new T640s.

Speaking of networks that are homed to the new network, Nysernet is planning to complete their transition to the new network at 0630 EST tomorrow morning. I just traded IMs with Bill Owens this evening. IPv6 is already transition and he's seeing the Kame turtle. IPv6 multicast works as well. We sourced some >1Gbps multicast streams from New York this afternoon and all went smoothly.

BTW, I'm told that the new weather map will be ready tomorrow. Reverse and forward DNS will happen tomorrow or Saturday. Our systems engineering guys are bringing up a new tool that auto-generates all our DNS off our network topology database.