Mills@UDEL.EDU (10/04/87)
Folks, The primary NSFNET gateway at the Pittsburg Computer Center (ARPANET address 10.4.0.14) is presently unreachable from a large number of low-traffic sites. Apparently, this is due to a shortage of virtual-circuit resources in the ACC 5250 X.25 interface and/or PSN 14. High-traffic sites on the ARPANET with NSFNET clients, such as the core gateways and certain other gateways and hosts, capture these resources, leaving low-traffic sites out in the cold. This phenomenon should be familiar to gateway watchers with experience in the EGP swamps. With a bit of ingenuity, it is possible to work around this problem. The trick for an ARPANET host/gateway is to source-route to some other gateway likely to have already captured a virtual circuit to PSC or to some other gateway that connects to the NSFNET Backbone. This should be considered a method of last resort and then only until the virtual-circuit problem is resolved at PSC. The obvious choice for the source route is via one of the EGP corespeakers; however, there may be other gateways that will work as well. Again, note that the above suggestion should apply only if users begin to riot or carry weapons into the machine room. If anybody attributes the suggestion to me in public, I will disown it and subject the poor soul to a torrent of foul-smelling gongrams and writhing nastygrams. Be advised the PSC has notified the Pittsburg police to watch out for convoys of irate gateway keepers. You may decide to march on Santa Barbara (ACC) instead. All this in clean fun - those guys are probably working through the night anyway. Dave