On Wed, 4 Dec 1996, Danny Stroud wrote:
What I meant was that the demand for traffic seems to be growing faster than technologies ability to deliver it. Even with the planned *new* technologies, I am predicting that there will be a point where the traffic of the exchange points will need to bifurcate simply to be able to process the load, i.e. more *smaller* exchange points all running at top capacity of the available technology.
If the argument is merely that LAN bandwidth cannot handle the demands placed on them at the NAPs, I think that this is a weak argument for NAP proliferation. First of all, I doubt that NAPs do or will max out LAN technology. It may max out _cheap_ LAN technology, but so what? Gigaswitches are a hell of a lot cheaper than even ten T3s. If gigabit ether develops with anything like the speed that fast ether did, then doubly so. Plus, isn't ATM supposed to be infinitely scalable? Why don't you have OC-3 or even OC-12, whether it be ATM or IP/SONET? Assuming that LAN technology is the limiting factor (to which I can't really agree), why proliferate NAPs instead of constructing parallel physical networks at the existing ones? You can do bandwith aggregation at Layer 2 just fine if you try, and without increasing network complexity. (I know there are problems with this approach, but it can be done. Plus, fewer NAPs, more time to spend doing it right.) "But the routers can't process packets fast enough." NAP proliferation hurts rather than helps on this problem. Sure, you have more aggregate horsepower to throw at a problem, but from a simpleton's point of view it looks like a roughly exponentially more complex routing state from which to decide. In any event, it definitely doesn't help. You still haven't addressed the route flap problem. One argument I'm sort of suprised that you haven't made is that multiple NAPs make the network more redundant and, ergo, tolerant of failure. Of course, they don't. Three NAPs per continent is plenty to serve this purpose; anything over this is reckless.
It's not exactly the same analysis of costs for the final mile that drove the telco CO deployment, but the idea is the same: sometimes available technology defines the strategy.
Sure it does. I think that the argument that technology is forcing us to more NAPs is a losing one, although it's certainly theoretically plausible.
Any better?
Yep; keep 'em coming. __ Todd Graham Lewis Linux! Core Engineering Mindspring Enterprises tlewis@mindspring.com (800) 719 4664, x2804