2. Identify which % of traffic, if any, has regional locality.
Are there any major potholes in this theory that I'm missing?
Locality of reference refers to the geographical separation between source and destination addresses on IP packets. If you think of the source/dest pairs as representing a virtual connection and these connections as representing a logical topology of the Internet, then the message that started this thread was explaining how to engineer your physical topology to best match the logical topology. Of course, because the Internet does not exist this physical topology is likely to always be sub-optimal in an engineering sense because the business decision that end users make to establish physical links to the Internet are made for economic and emotional reasons more than for engineering reasons. The only area in which engineering can be used to solve your hot button issue is that if providers in your local area build a good local exchange point then you may be able to persuade more local end users to connect to local providers in order to attain better local connectivity. ******************************************************** Michael Dillon voice: +1-650-482-2840 Senior Systems Architect fax: +1-650-482-2844 PRIORI NETWORKS, INC. http://www.priori.net "The People You Know. The People You Trust." ********************************************************