Subject: [IGSMAIL-008] Internet Failure
From: Peter Morgan
Date: Thu, 4 Jun 1992 17:01:04 PDT

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IGS Electronic Mail        4-JUN-1992 17:01:04       Message Number 8
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From:    Peter Morgan
Subject: Internet Failure
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The router boxes on the connection between NSF net and australia,
specifically AARNET and all .au addresses were changed late last week in
the US. These boxes and their protocols are in compatable (sort of) with
the boxes in Australia. Replacement boxes have been sent from canberra
to Melbourne for munari which is our national gateway. 

The effect is most noticable for traffic originating from Australia. The
sympton is a very heavily loaded communications link. Approaching
saturation, actually is saturated. Packets are being regenerated by the
hosts and retransmitted clogging the line. In excess of 40% of packets
are suffering this fate. For the end-to-end users they see thruputs of
0.2 kilobytes per second. Ftp doesnt time out, it working flat out!.

I noticed the problem over the weekend and our local folk initially
thought that it was just super heavy use until I produced logs of our
"normal" expectations.

This has implications for our work. It is important to keep logs of
thruputs that will aid tracing faults. It also indicates that we all
need to be aware of the expected rates and changes to these rates.

regards peter