It’s late evening here in Radaur and I am sitting in my room with open door looking outside in dark. I wonder if darkness outside is more then darkness I see in our system. No, I am not referring to any routing glitch or bandwidth chock point but even more fundamental issue that is “Lost sense of Engineering” in current education age. It’s pretty hot weather out in my room. I will start this blog post with two interesting real life experiences from last few years.
Interesting days as always. Recently I was handed over “Alumni form” from college.
Mixed feelings. This brings me to conclusion that I somewhat missed college life but anyways that’s small price I paid for my high obsession with some long term ideas. (ok may be that explains why I don’t have a Facebook account? Stop asking me about it!)
Hard to come to any conclusion at this stage.
Anyways post for today…
Last night I was looking at routing tables and saw a interesting case where for a specific route.
Here’s what I got from Tata’s AS6453 looking glass:
Router: gin-ldn-core4
Site: UK, London, LDN
Command: show ip bgp 117.219.227.229
BGP routing table entry for 117.219.224.0/20
Bestpath Modifiers: deterministic-med
Paths: (4 available, best #4)
Multipath: eBGP
17 18 19
33765 1299 3549 9829, (received-only)
ix-3-1-2.core4.LDN-London. from ix-3-1-2.core4.LDN-London. (ix-3-1-2.core4.LDN-London.)
Origin IGP, valid, external
4755 9829
mlv-tcore2. (metric 3605) from l78-tcore2. (66.110.10.234)
Origin IGP, valid, internal
Community:
Originator: 66.110.10.215
4755 9829
mlv-tcore2. (metric 3605) from l78-tcore1. (66.110.10.237)
Origin IGP, valid, internal
Community:
Originator: 66.110.10.215
4755 9829
mlv-tcore2. (metric 3605) from ldn-mcore3. (ldn-mcore3.)
Origin IGP, valid, internal, best
Community:
Originator: 66.110.10.215
The first route in table seems pretty weird. AS path is 33765 1299 3549 9829 i.e clearly AS33765 sitting in middle of AS6453 and AS1299. This must be a route leak since Tata AS6453 and Telia AS1299 are way too bigger then Tanzania telecom and hence there’s no possibility of Tata transitting via Tanzania telecom. Though issue seems for just one specific route for BSNL which Tanzania telecom is learning from Telia, which further is getting from Global Crossing AS3549 (one of upstreams of BSNL).
Last week I saw an interesting post at APNIC mailing list about IRINN (recently formed NIR in Indian region).
Poster Jimmy was concerned about IRINN’s netname
inetnum: 0.0.0.0 - 255.255.255.255
netname: IRINN-BROADCAST-ADDRESSES
descr: Broadcast addresses
descr: These addresses cannot (should not) be routed on the Internet.
country: IN
admin-c: IH1-IN
tech-c: IH1-IN
status: ALLOCATED PORTABLE
remarks: send spam and abuse report to info@irinn.in
mnt-by: IRINN-HM
mnt-irt: IRT-IRINNHM-IN
mnt-lower: IRINN-HM
changed: hostmaster2@irinn.in 20130420
source: IRINN
As per first two lines entire IPv4 address space i.e 0.0.0.0/0 (ranging from 0.0.0.0 to 255.255.255.255) was put as IRINN-Broadcast while expected was IANA broadcast (since IANA sits on top in this RIR & NIR hierarchy).
When I was in US last time, I picked a nice charger with it’s own backup from Amazon. It’s PowerGen charger with a storage capacity of 8400mAh with two USB ports for output (one with 2Amps output and other with 600mA with 5V standard USB).
This is a amazing product since 8400mAh is really huge amount power. My phone’s battery has a capacity of 1750mAh and theoretically speaking this can charge battery from 0 to full around 4 times. In practical experience I have tried for around 3 times during long flights. Never really needed to go beyond that point. The charging cable which came with this charger has something special - It’s a “charging only” cable without any data connection capability. The charging only cable carries only “e_lectrical connectivity_” via + and - wires without any data pins (D+ and D- shorted). The advantage is that charging speed with this cable was really fast and I really enjoyed using it with external charger as well as my iPad’s charger which has a 2A output (which brings 2A x 5V = 10W power). In theory these charging only cables give very fast charging because they don’t put USB data connection. A standard USB port on computer has power limits and device is signaled to pull more power via “shorted data pins”. Usually device is connected to 600mA or even less in data+charging mode, while such shorting brings power to max of port which is usually 1A for most of ports (and 2Amps for iPad charger). Unfortunately connector of cable which came with my powergen charger went pretty loose. Tonight I decided to make an extra data cable which was lying around into “charging only” cable by shorting it’s D+ and D- mins. It was pretty easy except that actual wires are really thin and I had slightly hard time in removing insulation without breaking them off.