Good point on the CO issue. I was not suggesting that the telco CO was a
direct analog for Internet exchange points. I might not have made my point
clearly. Let me try again. What I meant was that the demand for traffic seems
to be growing faster than technologies ability to deliver it. Even with the
planned *new* technologies, I am predicting that there will be a point where
the traffic of the exchange points will need to bifurcate simply to be able to
process the load, i.e. more *smaller* exchange points all running at top
capacity of the available technology. It's not exactly the same analysis of
costs for the final mile that drove the telco CO deployment, but the idea is
the same: sometimes available technology defines the strategy.
Any better? des
----------
From: owner-nanog(a)merit.edu on behalf of Todd Graham Lewis
Sent: Wednesday, December 04, 1996 3:46 AM
To: nanog(a)merit.edu
Subject: RE: Exchanges that matter...
On Tue, 3 Dec 1996, Danny Stroud wrote:
> Actually, I think the issue is not about moving. It is more about developing
> *new* facilities now to handle the forecasted demands.
Certainly a valid pov.
> As the Internet becomes
> more pervasive and the expectations of the users (and investors) become
> higher, we (the Internet access provider community) will need to have
better,
> cheaper, faster, more resilient, etc. etc. networks.
Yep, uh huh.
> I find it hard to fathom
> a completely pervasive network routing through a few exchange points.
Why not? More below.
> As the
> national telco infrastructure evolved over the last few decades (with CO's
on
> just about every corner) so will go the Internet.
But with most of the major backbone providers we're rapidly approaching
POPs in every city as it is, and any finer granularity really doesn't make
much sense, except maybe in the mega-cities.
Exchange points are not analogous to COs; major routing problems ensue as
the number of exchange points increase. E.g., if there were three EPs per
continent, and if each major network connected to these three EPs, and a
requirement for connecting to the EPs was that you have a fully redundant
backbone, what would be the problem?
> I admire the foresight of
> those attempting to develop new exchange points. I do not envy the uphill
> battle they have before them. des
I don't envy them either, but I'm beginning to question the "a chicken in
every pot and a NAP on every corner" approach to network design. Of
course, I don't strictly have to worry about these things; that's why I
and AOL and most network operators have upstream network providers.
__
Todd Graham Lewis Linux! Core Engineering
Mindspring Enterprises tlewis(a)mindspring.com (800) 719 4664, x2804
