Could it be that private facilities are much easier to get things done in? If only 3-4 networks are there, and you already want to exchange traffic with each of these networks and you know you can start as HSSI between them, and then add higher speed interfaces as needed in a few days not weeks, why wouldn't you go? I am thinking of the MCI CoLo in St. Louis, any facts are purely accidental. -Deepak. On Thu, 5 Dec 1996, Danny Stroud wrote:
So how do you reconcile the increasing number of private facilities? Although not exchange points in the truest sense ala MAEs and NAPs, they do carry an increasing percentage of cross-network traffic. The number of these types of facilities will grow. Maybe our difference here is that I count these and others do not. des
---------- From: Alex.Bligh Sent: Wednesday, December 04, 1996 1:50 PM To: Todd Graham Lewis Cc: Danny Stroud; nanog@merit.edu Subject: Re: Exchanges that matter...
On Wed, 4 Dec 1996, Todd Graham Lewis wrote:
Three NAPs per continent is plenty to serve this purpose; anything over this is reckless.
Woops. Three is a nice, round, theoretical number. Five is fine. Fifty is highly questionable to my mind. Thinking that more NAPs solves the problem is just flat wrong.
Hmmm.. Not sure "continent" is the right granularity here. In North America telecoms prices do not in general take enormous hikes when you cross state borders. In (say) Europe they do. Lines between European countries often cost more than lines between a given European country and the US. Also content and thus traffic is far more localised to each country due to language difficulties (well that part that doesn't go to English speaking countries anyway). So 3-5 NAPs (or whatever) per homogenous area (homogenous in content and in telecoms charging) perhaps. But ridiculous telco regulation within Europe and language differences makes a very strong case for at least one NAP per country (we dump about 50% of our UK traffic off in the UK).
Alex Bligh Xara Networks