Yes, when I said "route-server or looking glass" I meant one or the other or both, not that they were interchangeable terms. My apologies for any confusion I may have caused. > I think it would be useful if we had an agreed set of terms for > those services. > > One is a "route collector", with which exchanges participants peer in > order to give the exchange operator a view into what is going on > > Another is a "looking glass" which allows some group (ranging from > participants to the general public) to see layer 3 adjacencies Hmmm... These would seem to me to be the same thing, just a difference of who's allowed to log in. I'd call both of these a looking glass. > The third is a route server. The route servers allow > exchange participant to outsource the routing task (but not the > forwarding of packets) to a specialized host within the exchange. I've also heard some symantic confusion between route-servers and route reflectors. In conversation, I usually assume that distinction to be between functionally equivalent boxes operating in the plenum between a number of administrative domains (a route-server) or as glue between regions or ASes within one administrative domain (a route reflector). I don't know how common that understanding would be, though. Anyone have any better thoughts on the difference between a route-server and a route reflector? -Bill