At 04:53 PM 4/12/97 -0700, Michael Dillon wrote:
On Sat, 12 Apr 1997, Russ Haynal wrote:
As an ISP, BBN may be peering with MCI(the ISP), but I too had the Understanding that Some of BBN's fiber was leased from MCI(the telco?). Anyone else with insight ?
I think the day is long gone when any meaningful insight can be gained by looking at this kind of thing. It is entirely possible that SprintLink is leasing MCI T3's and InternetMCI is leasing Sprint T3's and that both of the T3's are running in the same fibre bundle owned by Worldcom.
The three layers, IP services, digital data service, and dark fiber, are getting rather intertwingled and this doesn't even take into account usage of frame networks or ATM networks. I'm not implying anything specific by naming the three companies above, just that it is not very easy to find out where a particular IP provider gets their service and it is hard to extrapolate anything useful from that information if you did know it.
This brings up another point I've pondered... I've noticed that many of the Backbone ISP backbone maps seem to have an amazing amount of similarity - i.e. connections between identicle sets of cities. I wonder how many different ISP's might be riding within the same Fiber bundle (the one right below some guy's back-hoe) If BBN and Internet MCI both run inside of MCI's fiber to/from a small ISP's hometown, then it won't make much sense for a small ISP to get a T-1 from MCI and BBN in the name of "redundancy" - If they both can be taken out with one backhoe. Might this risk still exist if my UUNET/Worldcom fiber also happens to lay 2 feet away from MCI's fiber in the ground in some kind of "telco right of way" Russ __________________________________________________________________ Russ Haynal - Internet Consultant, Instructor, Speaker "Helping organizations gain the most benefit from the Internet" russ@navigators.com http://www.navigators.com 703-729-1757 ------------------------------------------------------------------ Author:"Internet; A Knowledge Odyssey" (Top-rated CD-ROM Tutorial) Available from MindQ Publishing: http://www.mindq.com