There have been several questions about MAE-East and the DC NAP. In particular it is asked why the NAP, and the MAE/GIX are separate facilities. I don't see them as separate facilities, instead I see them as 2 virtual networks on top of the very same MFS facilities. Both virtual networks use MFS's ability to offer bridged 802 framed/addressed/switched networks in a distributed manner. In fact, there is no really good reason why they have to be separate virtual networks, since they have the same basic technical requirements and have similar implementation policies. There has been some debate that the problem is that the NSF wants control over the NAP, but there does not appear to be any evidence to this line of argument. NSF would like to see the following policies to be in place for the NAPs: non-discriminatory access to the NAP for Internet Service Providers NSPs serving RNPs that have NSF RNP awards must advertise routes to and accept traffic to/from the RNP's US R&E customers. Bandwidth and service to scale over time It does not appear that this runs counter to the policies of the MAE/GIX. An obvious result of deliberation on the issues at hand would be to simply relabel the things as MAE/GIX/NAP and be done with it. Any such arrangement would of course be contingent on an agreement between the entity that has contracted with MFS to provide MAE-East, and the entity (NSF) who have a cooperative agreement with MFS to furnish the DC NAP service. NSF would welcome the opportunity to open talks that might lead to such an agreement. This line of discussion naturally leads into the issues of "... what about the CIX and California NAP, they are both on PacBell facilities, etc. ...". Here the issues are not so clear as in the MFS case since the PacBell NAP is based on ATM technology and the CIX has elected to use SMDS as their service. This does not preclude interconnecting the CIX with the PacBell NAP. One could imagine a CIX router getting an ATM interface and connecting to the PacBell ATM service that the PacBell NAP is built on. The NSPs that are connected to the ATM service could then *ALSO* use ATM to access each other, and *ALSO* use the ATM service to access other CIX members. Over time it is likely that SMDS will simply be another type of frame that is carried over ATM and that you will see: Router Router SMDS SMDS ATM Interface V.35/HSSI | | | SMDS DSU/CSU | | | | ATM Switch ======== SMDS Switch ATM Link This would result in the same kind of underlying facility merger you see today for the bridged 802 based services that MFS offers. I fail to see the point of maintaining separation of the CIX and PacBell NAP that appears to be the focus of many in these discussions. Interconnecting the two services (NAP and CIX) could be very useful in simplifying the issues of Internet interconnection while maintaining the CIX and NAP policy objectives. cheers, peter