On Tue, 22 Oct 1996, John Curran wrote:
At 15:39 10/22/96, Kent W. England wrote:
... But there isn't any gee-whiz technology that you can do at a private interconnect that you can't do at a NAP/MAE. Open NAPs aren't bad engineering.
While there is no difference from a technology perspective, there's also no benefit to be gained by interconnecting large networks at a public (as opposed to private) interconnects.
John, you say there is no benefit to be gained by large providers using anything other than private inter-connects. may i refine that question slightly and ask: benefit **to whom?** to the large provider? If the question of benefit is limited in this manner, i'd guess that your statement is quite correct. but what does this discussion begin to bring in focus regarding the evolving topology of the internet? i wrote more than a year ago about the "club of six" being at the top of the internet hierarchy by virtue of interconnects and peering with each other at most of the five major exchange points. Since then one of many obvious questions is: what does it take for the six to become seven and the seven to become eight. Etc. Since I do not have direct acces to routers at major exhange points, I cannot easily tell who is peering with whom. not many people will talk about this even privately. yet the conscensus has been that there will be new members, because the alternative would mean inviting anti trust action. Candidates are obviously companies like BBN, netcom, advantis, crl, AT&T and others. Thus I hear statements like the club of 6 has now become the club of at least 15.... and presumably all is well. When you get big enough, you to can connect to the internet at the very apex as demarcated by major naps in the us and soon in asia and europe. *BUT* here is my question. Don't private interconnects essentially provide a new apex for the internet? One that pushes interconnects at the major exchange points down a level. Sprint, MCI, UUNET, and BBN are clearly the four largest players by market share. All of them have multiple private interconnects with each other. perhaps ANS does as well. AGIS certainly does not. So in this sense, the "6" have not really become 15 but rather have become 4 or maybe 5. now you may say that from a competitive point of view this makes no difference. perhaps. But what if the big four no longer see the need to upgrade their bandwidth INTO and OUT OF exchange points? what happens to the "secondary ten" when they get some large customers who see their packects die between Sprints mae east router and the nearest sprint backbone POP if that pipe is over crowded. Will we hear them complain about ungodly packet loss and move to the industrial strength service of the big four who can do hot potato hand offs to each other at multiple private exchanges around the US and increasingly around the world? if such is the case, how will the secondary ten ever get enough customers to convince the top four to let them do private exchanges as well? Is this part of an inevitable dynamic that is and will channel market share into the hands of the top four? Given the need of the automotive network exchange, will it, under these conditions, certify anyone except the top four? One would certainly think it would certify the top 15 but if the stratification between service at private interconnects and public exchanges continues, could it certify anyone except the top four?
One can certainly make the argument that running large traffic flows through shared interconnects is bad engineering if a private interconnects for such traffic are available.
/John
True, but what about the economic and public policy aspects of such decisions?