--On måndag, måndag 1 dec 2008 09.08.09 -0500 "Patrick W. Gilmore" <patrick@ianai.net> wrote:
I don't think any IXP can become a significant player on the Internet today by only attracting participants from the country in question. The Internet is not bound by political borders. (Usually. :)
There is a significant amount of traffic being exchanged between swedish operators on Netnod. It might be the case that the broadband penetration in Sweden justifies the establishment of local IXPen. This is however irrelevant to the discussion at hand -- or did you think about some kind of issue with connectivity from Stockholm and abroad? At least 3-4 providers sell connectivity into Stockholm on own fiber paths. Is Netnod useless to you because you are not one of them?
As for the blasting of tunnels and national security angle, this is an IXP, not nuclear missile launch control. It should not be your only vector to get bits from point A to B. And if it is, then you have a larger problem than worrying about the facility withstanding physical attack.
It is an optimisation, a very well engineered one.
And no, attaching to multiple NetNod nodes is not a solution, since only Stockholm has a large number of participants.
Probably true for international clients. Less so for Swedish ISPen.
End of day, an IXP is not some magical thing. It is an ethernet switch allowing multiple networks to exchange traffic more easily than direct interconnection - and that is all it should be. It should not be mission critical. Treating it as such raises the cost, and therefore barrier to entry, which lowers its value.
You did not answer my question on usability of fiber based on amount of knowledge about where it is. -- Måns Nilsson M A C H I N A There's a little picture of ED MCMAHON doing BAD THINGS to JOAN RIVERS in a $200,000 MALIBU BEACH HOUSE!!