Bundusch Germania Politzei
Forgive my lack of German spelling/grammar, but, hopefully I came close.
*choke* *splutter* Bundesgrenzschutz Bundes = of the Federation (Federal) Grenz = Border Schutz = Protection Interesting example. One might expect this organization to have many locations, widely seperated, at the edge of a larger network. In other words, the Internet in Germany is better connected in the large cities than in many (not all) of the far flung border towns. So they need to get connectivity from many suppliers depending on who supplies a particular town, but they want to run a single unified network. It just looks more like the tortilla wrapping than the taco filling that people draw for most networks. What!? That was supposed to be a picture of a cloud? In any case, my company runs a similar sort of network. The main network doesn't peer with ISPs and is not connected to the Internet anywhere. The 10,000 or so locations connected to our network all presumably have Internet connectivity as well. So if you draw the Internet cloud, then add lots spikes sticking out and then connect the spikes with a thin tortilla, you have our network as the wrapper and our customer's Internet connections as the spikes. Every one of those spikes is multihomed to us and at least one ISP even if you cannot see our routes or our AS. And we are not the only company to operate one of these Community-Of-Interest Networks. The European auto industry has one. The international air industry has one. We have competitors in the financial services industry who have them. In fact, consider this. What if the majority of IP network growth in the next decade, is in building these COINs? These are all internets and therefore they require globally unique address space and globally unique ASNs. This is not your father's Internet anymore. --Michael Dillon