Between fading memories and NDA's, it can be hard to track how things happened...but I'm trying to put together some timelines about interprovider peering both through private peering (i.e., at what point it became economic to meet other than through ARPANET/NSFNET) and at exchanges. In the beginning, of course, there was the ARPANET. Then there was the NSFNET. The NAPs were the first recognizable exchange points, with AUPs. NAPs were linked by VBNS. CIX came later, without the AUP restrictions of NSFNET. My impression is that bandwidth into it, at first, was quite limited. At some point, there started to be a business case for large providers to interconnect with bilateral private links as well as at exchanges. When did such links first get used for commercial traffic? In the beginning, were they short-haul connections between cages in exchanges, or WAN links between major provider hubs? I'm referring here only to interprovider links, not to transit customers. Also in the timeline was the advent of true "local" or "metro" exchanges. Going through the archives, the first I see was Tucson. Was that indeed the first cooperative exchange intended to reduce backhaul?
In message <p05001911b6bc16c992d2@[63.216.127.100]>, "Howard C. Berkowitz" writ es:
Between fading memories and NDA's, it can be hard to track how things happened...but I'm trying to put together some timelines about interprovider peering both through private peering (i.e., at what point it became economic to meet other than through ARPANET/NSFNET) and at exchanges.
Hi Howard: My memory is that it became economic almost as soon as NSFNET started. Various regional networks found, for various reasons, that it was useful to have direct connections, independent of NSFNET. Recall that at certain times in its life, NSFNET didn't have enough bandwidth to meet demand. You can probably look at some of the old Internet maps that Mike Brescia used to prepare for IETF and see the backdoor paths. (Side note to old IETF/NSFNET types -- Mike didn't keep the originals of those maps, and they are fast becoming valuable bits of history -- if you still have your copies and find you don't need/value them anymore, please donate them to the Computer Museum or another history of technology museum). Craig one-time technical director, NSFNET Service Center
On Fri, 23 Feb 2001, Howard C. Berkowitz wrote:
In the beginning, of course, there was the ARPANET.
Then there was the NSFNET. The NAPs were the first recognizable exchange points, with AUPs. NAPs were linked by VBNS.
I think you left out a few intermediate steps like: - MILNET and the ARPANET-MILNET Mailbridge gateways. - The Wideband Net - CSnet - The NASA Science Internet - The various supercomputer-center centric networks (e.g. JVNCnet) Miles Fidelman ************************************************************************** The Center for Civic Networking PO Box 600618 Miles R. Fidelman, President & Newtonville, MA 02460-0006 Director, Municipal Telecommunications Strategies Program 617-558-3698 fax: 617-630-8946 mfidelman@civicnet.org http://civic.net/ccn.html Information Infrastructure: Public Spaces for the 21st Century Let's Start With: Internet Wall-Plugs Everywhere Say It Often, Say It Loud: "I Want My Internet!" **************************************************************************
Points well made. Perhaps I should clarify that my initial goal was more to track the evolution of commercial services. There's no question that individual academic and government networks preceded commercialization. For that matter, the evolution of regionals from a cooperative to a commercial model also isn't simple. Thanks to all from whom I'm getting responses. Several people have pointed out that various key events in this history haven't really been written down, and I hope I can pull some of these together and make them available to the community.
On Fri, 23 Feb 2001, Howard C. Berkowitz wrote:
In the beginning, of course, there was the ARPANET.
Then there was the NSFNET. The NAPs were the first recognizable exchange points, with AUPs. NAPs were linked by VBNS.
I think you left out a few intermediate steps like:
- MILNET and the ARPANET-MILNET Mailbridge gateways.
- The Wideband Net
- CSnet
- The NASA Science Internet
- The various supercomputer-center centric networks (e.g. JVNCnet)
Miles Fidelman
************************************************************************** The Center for Civic Networking PO Box 600618 Miles R. Fidelman, President & Newtonville, MA 02460-0006 Director, Municipal Telecommunications Strategies Program 617-558-3698 fax: 617-630-8946 mfidelman@civicnet.org http://civic.net/ccn.html
Information Infrastructure: Public Spaces for the 21st Century Let's Start With: Internet Wall-Plugs Everywhere Say It Often, Say It Loud: "I Want My Internet!" **************************************************************************
There is some background and history available at: http://www.merit.edu/merit/archive/nsfnet/ While the vBNS connected the NAPs, very few organizations were allowed to use the vBNS and so most traffic exchanged at the NAPs was from commercial networks. My (less than perfect) memory is that private exchanges between commercial backbones started to get serious in late 1995 and 1996 when some NAPs for some periods of time were or were perceived to be bottlenecks. Some of the first were between internetMCI and other networks (SprintNet, uunet, ...). You need to work the federal exchange points (FIXs) into your history and the MAEs. Some other history collections: http://www.merit.edu/merit/history.html -Jeff Ogden Merit At 8:39 AM -0500 2/23/01, Howard C. Berkowitz wrote:
Between fading memories and NDA's, it can be hard to track how things happened...but I'm trying to put together some timelines about interprovider peering both through private peering (i.e., at what point it became economic to meet other than through ARPANET/NSFNET) and at exchanges.
In the beginning, of course, there was the ARPANET.
Then there was the NSFNET. The NAPs were the first recognizable exchange points, with AUPs. NAPs were linked by VBNS.
CIX came later, without the AUP restrictions of NSFNET. My impression is that bandwidth into it, at first, was quite limited.
At some point, there started to be a business case for large providers to interconnect with bilateral private links as well as at exchanges. When did such links first get used for commercial traffic? In the beginning, were they short-haul connections between cages in exchanges, or WAN links between major provider hubs? I'm referring here only to interprovider links, not to transit customers.
Also in the timeline was the advent of true "local" or "metro" exchanges. Going through the archives, the first I see was Tucson. Was that indeed the first cooperative exchange intended to reduce backhaul?
participants (4)
-
Craig Partridge -
Howard C. Berkowitz -
Jeff Ogden -
Miles Fidelman