Alec H. Peterson wrote:
On Wed, Nov 05, 1997 at 12:46:50PM -0800, Adam Hersh wrote:
With all of the problems with MAE-EAST.....
Any plans from anyone to create a ATM exchange point in the DC area?
I can't think of a reason why somebody would do that.
All of the problems that mae-east is having is a clear sign that providers need to move their big peers off of the public fabric and onto private interconnects. Aside from the engineering problems, it just seems so difficult to justify having such an important part of a backbone's existance controlled by a third party. As these recent problems have illustrated, either that third party is either not capable or not willing to fix the problems. Either way, the end result is the same.
I don't think that the problems of MAE-EAST necessarily indicate problems with the exchange point concept in general. Others have indicated satisfaction with exhange points run by other parties. What the problems of MAE-EAST indicate to me is that FDDI/GigaSwitches are not the appropriate technology for MAE-EAST sized exchanges and that MFS is the wrong company to be running an exhange point. It would appear to me that there is an opportunity for a new player to get into the exchange point game. Since ATM seems to be a controversial choice to build exchange points, has anyone thought about using fast ethernet with an eventual transition to gigabit ethernet when gigabit ethernet becomes more mainstream? Jeff