Dave Siegel <dave@rtd.net> writes:

Dave (who's waiting to see a NAP built with a GSR (or similar) )

Almost. Well, that is, this is almost what you are waiting for. What you should want is a NAP that scales upwards from a level below the interfaces that the GSR can give you. In effect, what you want is a NAP that looks like this: {ethernet,atm,POET,HSSI}--7507--POS---1 blabla------7507--POS---2 0---POS---customer 1---POS---customer 2---POS---customer of course, in order for this to work, you really want to be running MPLS on all the devices from the *connectee* inwards. This gives you a multi-media connection to a NAP at speeds ranging from slow (you could do DS0s on a 7507, for example) to fast (you could do STM-16c/OC48c out the 12012). Note that I was even really nice and left "atm" up there as a potential access method. This is similar to what Milo and I wanted to do with the MAE-WEST conspiracy to let the NSF declare the PAC*Bell and MAE-WEST facilities to be co-priority-NAPs. Unfortunately someone (ahem) played politics better than us on that one front. On the other hand, the PAC*Bell NAP has hardly been a model of stunning success as a result... Anyway, the idea is that you can colocate or not colocate at this facility as you see fit, and you can use several access technologies including some carrier's ATM fabric. The NAP is extensible -- you could have a really big ATM channel into the 12012 with lots of VCs talking MPLS, for example, if that was really popular. There are some interesting questions about what to do when multiple load-balanced OC48s among several 12012s don't provide enough bandwidth at a decent cost, but those interesting questions plague other parts of the Internet where that will be a ceiling faster (probably). Deployment problem #1: MPLS availability. Interim gross hack #1: GRE tunnels across a private small-i internet using RFC-1918 space. (GRE tax is high, but it is perhaps less gross a hack than several other possibilities that have sprung to mind). The JUUNIPERMCIWORLDPALMPEXETC people reading this may wish to advance alternatives to the 12012, or a supplement for the 12012 for "robustness". tli has, after all, also proposed designs very similar to this; i think one was even posted to NANOG... Sean. P.S.: POET (packet over E3/T3) is very cool as a sort of lower-speed alternative to point-to-point POS. It does very well in this type of environment... Thank you auntie Cisco.