On Fri, 5 Apr 1996, Paul Ferguson wrote:
Better yet, call it the 'default-free core', which is ironically what it is already called. :-)
OK, how about this...
The core of the US Internet, also known as the default-free core, no longer follows a backbone topology. The core is composed of the major NSP's who operate national backbones providing national transit and who interconnect at all or most of the public exchange points.
So, to determine whether a carrier is part of the core:
Are they an NSP? Do they operate their own national backbone? Can they provide national transit over their own network infrastructure? Do they interconnect with other NSP's who satisfy the previous two conditions at most of the public exchange points?
Where public exchange points == {MAE-East, MAE-West, Pennsauken, PacBell NAP, Chicago NAP, and arguably the CIX router/cloud}.
Is this better?
Michael Dillon Voice: +1-604-546-8022 Memra Software Inc. Fax: +1-604-546-3049 http://www.memra.com E-mail: michael@memra.com
Avi