Asia connectivity outages, from the field

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Philip L. Lehman" <[email protected]>
Date: January 9, 2007 7:00:02 PM EST
To: [email protected]
Subject: Asia connectivity outages, from the field

Dave,

[For IP, if of interest.]

I've been in southern China (Changsha, in Hunan province) since  
Sunday (local time).  My observations have been that network  
connectivity is significantly worse than usual, but is also  
(unsurprisingly) somewhat time-of-day dependent. I have fairly good  
success in the early morning; on the other hand, during evening hours  
(local) it's difficult to connect with servers in the States. There  
are also, of course, dependence on the particular services needed;  
some Internet sites appear to be either better connected or have  
services partly provided out of China, enhancing availability (Google  
is a notable example of good perceived connectivity).  I also suspect  
that the phenomenon includes increased network congestion due to a  
much larger number of retries after failed attempts (to which I find  
myself contributing, for example hitting the refresh button in hopes  
of a better result).

We're hearing that services are up to the "70%" level (could be true,  
could be PR) but that repairs have been delayed by a problem with a  
repair ship and rough weather at sea.

Cheers,

Philip Lehman


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