I'm looking for a cost-effective, highly reliable, high bandwidth, low latency solution for a link in Canada between Vancouver and Toronto. I have a couple of ideas: 1) Droping some type of high-speed interface into the frame-relay cloud of a third party network like AT&T, Sprint, MetroNet, or whoever provides this type of service. I think this would definetly be a scalable solution as it would allow us to put POPs anywhere we like in between and it would be as easy as running a circuit back into the frame cloud. The only issues with this is a) What are these networks like? Are they reliable? Are they fast? Is their a risk of them not being able to provide us with the bandwidth we paid for without performance loss due to lack of capacity (QoS)? 2) Assuming we buy our own fibre: Do we run a direct link between Toronto and Vancouver directly or drop a POP in between; somewhere in Saskatchewan or Manitoba and running fibre out of there to each? I may like the direct route from A to B but how pricy is that and how scalable is that? If we plan do put POPs into some some cities along the way we'd have to run pipes from those POPs back into either Toronto of Vancouver. If we go the route of A to B to C that would probably be a bit smarter as the haul from POP to POP wouldn't be so large. Is it common practice for the National ISP to lay their own pipe or is it more common practice to obtain the link from a third party? How do the UUNets, and BBNPlanets do it? They are not telcos so laying a pipe is not as easily justified. Do they buy fibre between A and B or do they even go through some sort of telco-like carrier?! If anyone has any ideas, opinions, experiences, or something to sell me I'd love to hear from you! Regards, ===( Jason Lixfeld )=======( Network Engineer - Internet Direct Canada )=== == == == Internet Direct Canada Inc. | JOIN the Toronto Internet Exchange!! == == 301-5415 Dundas Street West | FREE Bandwidth For Toronto area ISPs == == Toronto, Ontario M9B-1B5 CA | http://www.torontointernetxchange.net == == (416) 233-7150 (v) | "Building a Faster Internet" == == (416) 236-5804 (f) | == == == =========================================================================== == Internet Direct... A Different Kind of Internet Company. == ===========================================================================