On Wed, 14 Jun 2000 hardie@equinix.com wrote:
In either case, Mark's point about scaling interconnect bandwidth is a key question. On one hand you have Tier-2 ISPs who want fast ethernet based systems, because they don't really have an immediate need to go for anything faster; on the other, you have backbone-to-backbone traffic that is rapidly moving to the point where the only thing that will make sense is to trade a lambda. It's hard to have public exchange that it is a good entry point for a Tier-2 that also meets the needs of the backbones. Using multiple different exchange methods to handle the different needs is one way around the problem, but it comes at a cost in gear, support, and network engineering. The inertia in existing traffic exchange mechanisms is also high enough that what tends to happen is that new connections take new forms but the old mechanisms aren't taken out of service at any speed--which again has a cost in gear, support, and network engineering.
I don't believe its nearly this bad. It seems to me that the VAST majority of backbone private peering is still happening at the OC3 level. In a public exchange point where you're talking to multiple networks across a shared media it makes sense to do GigE, multiple GigE, 10GigE, etc, with OC48 or > feeding it, but due to the nature of the beast (the fact that you're exchanging traffic in multiple locations with multiple networks), private peering is in no such immediate danger. Infact a lot of "backbone to backbone" peering is still done with DS3s (think of the content providers with little need to talk amongst eachother in bulk, GlobalCenter, Exodus, AboveNet, etc). The interesting traffic is where the data providers (like those mentioned above) meet the data suckers (@Home, AOL, etc), especially as streaming media takes off. If we had a few more PAIX's and Equinix's in strategic locations the internet would be a better place. :P -- Richard A Steenbergen <ras@e-gerbil.net> http://www.e-gerbil.net/humble PGP Key ID: 0x138EA177 (67 29 D7 BC E8 18 3E DA B2 46 B3 D8 14 36 FE B6)