On Fri, May 22, 1998 at 10:02:47PM -0500, Tim Salo wrote:
I have two conflicting notions about the the interesting possibilities offered by nationwide layer-two services:
o Layer-two services with distance-insensitive pricing, such as ATM, create some interesting opportunities. If it doesn't cost any more to get across the country than to get across town, why should I build a local NAP rather than a nationwide NAP? (Unless, of course, I am a RBOC and am administratively constrained from offering inter-LATA service.) (I am also ignoring a comparison of a NAP-in-a-closet/POP/parking ramp versus a NAP-in-a-metropolitan-area; this is e-mail to nanog, not a paper for Sigcomm.) Perhaps more relevant today, why should I build a regional Gigapop, _if_ my ATM pricing is truly distance-insensitive? (There might be an answer to the last question, I really don't know. But, I keep asking.)
In other words, if pricing is distance-insensitive, why do I need local exchanges?
Forgive me, but kee-rist! Haven't I bung this drum enough this month? Because, more and more as the net penetrates, the traffic is more and more _local_. Geographically local. My point about MAE-East-in-a-garage was that there was only _one_ of them; where it _was_ was only thrown in for spite. Especially as the net becomes more used for telecommuting, there is absolutely _no_ sense in my having to telnet from St Pete 30 miles to Tampa via a router in Maryland or San Francisco, "just" because the two sites in question decided to buy their connectivity from different backbones.
o Distance matters. It is easy to configure an IP network over a large layer-two service that bounces packets around the country, (because IP routing protocols generally think in terms of hop count, not [physical] distance). It would be nice if routing protocols thought about [physical] distance, rather than require the network designer to be responsible for designing the network such that considerations of physical distance were implicit in the network design. Of course, in the good old days before distance-insensitive-priced services, this wasn't such an issue.
I don't know if it's _possible_ to push this into the routing layer -- even if the routing protocol decides not to ship those 30 mile packets 3000 miles... it doesn't _matter_ if there's no link to _put them on_. It's obvious that it's time for my nap (no pun intended), my underscore quotient has shot through the roof. Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth jra@baylink.com Member of the Technical Staff Unsolicited Commercial Emailers Sued The Suncoast Freenet "Two words: Darth Doogie." -- Jason Colby, Tampa Bay, Florida on alt.fan.heinlein +1 813 790 7592 Managing Editor, Top Of The Key sports e-zine ------------ http://www.totk.com