On Mon, 21 Oct 1996, Jon Zeeff wrote:
In other words, the big players don't like the "open" naps and are deliberately not installing sufficient bandwidth to them?
No, the open NAP's are bad engineering and the big players are fixing the topology by routing around them. Visualize a typical garden spiderweb. All the main strands lead to the core of the web but there are many short transverse strands that provide alternate routes for the spider to travel. Now visualize the Eiffel tower. There are major support beams interlaced with many shorter braces. Now visualize a typical statewide highway grid. There are major highways converging on a city but there are always bypass roads around the city unless the city is a very small one. The Internet absolutely needs exchange points. And all but the smallest exchange points absolutely need bypasses. I think that right now we are in a phase where the need for bypasses (private exchanges between two parties) is quite clear but the deployment is lagging a bit because of this tremendous wave of growth that everybody is trying to keep up with. If you've read about the distribution of market towns in Ancient Mesopotamia then another thing that we can expect to see is a regular pattern of small exchanges everywhere with the occasional larger regional exchange and a handful of major national exchange points. I'm not sure yet whether the local ISP qualifies as the "small exchanges everywhere" or whether this role will be filled by metropolitan exchanges in every city. Time will tell I suppose. Michael Dillon - ISP & Internet Consulting Memra Software Inc. - Fax: +1-604-546-3049 http://www.memra.com - E-mail: michael@memra.com