In message <41A4DF8F.9000701@ai.net>, Deepak Jain writes:

Vicky, I apologize if I am hijacking your thread.

Is it just me or does all this talk of Research (and other Public Interest) Networks and logical separation by layer 1/2 leave [everyone] nonplussed?

How is logical separation of a network [say via MPLS] much different than using a lambda to do the same thing?

Wearing my researcher hat, the answer depends on what sort of research you're trying to conduct. There are more things to do with a fiber than just running IPv4 over it. --Steve Bellovin, http://www.research.att.com/~smb

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Hi Deepak! you raise some interesting points from bw standpoint. what really got me scratching my head is the fact that throwing bw to conserve computing power. in this cat and mouse game, mouse always wins :-) "The OptiPuter project aims at learning how to 'waste' bandwidth and storage in order to conserve 'scarce' computing in this new world of inverted values," said Smarr. i'm not even sure why even implement mpls where latency/congestion is not an issue specially in this case or even talking about I2 for that matter. regards, /vicky Deepak Jain wrote: | Vicky, I apologize if I am hijacking your thread. | | Is it just me or does all this talk of Research (and other Public | Interest) Networks and logical separation by layer 1/2 leave [everyone] | nonplussed? | | How is logical separation of a network [say via MPLS] much different | than using a lambda to do the same thing? It seems kind of dumb to me | that a network that is spending the money to buy capacity is selling a | 2.5G or 10G wave to universities as any kind of improvement... I'm not | even sure they could do it at a better price than a desperate telco that | is selling the underlying fiber in the first place. | | Engineering idea: All the constituent folks do the same network, but | build it as a single logical network, with say all 40x10G Lambdas on it. | Everyone is given a 2.5G or 10G MPLS tunnel with the ability to use all | unused bandwidth that is available on the network at that time... That | would at least have some legs and create some value for having more | membership. | | This smacks me as similar to Philadelphia wanting to deploy universal | WiFi and charging $20-$25/month for it -- a free network to the city | makes sense, afterall they pay taxes -- a psuedo-commercial service, | what's the point? Do these government (and other so-called Public | Interest) networks really make sense in the U.S. or is everyone still | stuck in a timewarp when/where the NSFnet made sense because no one | (commercially) could/would step up to perform the same function. | | Hopefully there is some operational content in there... If you don't see | an on-list response from me, you probably know why. | | Deepak Jain | AiNET | | Vicky wrote: | |> |>http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=53700951 |> |> | | -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.5 (MingW32) Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFBpOqspbZvCIJx1bcRAtonAJsH2dJLmQo+OpB5q/bcl/iOsCQt1wCeM+rQ sM0+tPS3yN+nCrl5y0iA7KM= =R/vP -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Hi Deepak and Vicky, I can't resist comment even though at this point the additional questions that i can answer are very limited. For the past month I have been talking privately and more recently on a private mail list with folk at the heart of this. Canarie under Bill St Arnaud has been the global leader for more than the past five years. Tom Defanti and Joe Mambretti in chicago with the start tap and star light exchanges have been before National lambda rail (NRL) the main players in the US. NRL is perceived as quite important in that it will permit american universities to experiment with their own fiber and wavelength as the canadians have been with CA*Net4 for years. In Europe Kees neggers with Surfnet6 is doing the same thing. As I understand it Internet 2 and Dante/Geant in europe are primarily carrier dependent and therefore for the most part onlookers. NLR, Surfnet6, Ca*Net4 are or will be experimenting with User controlled light paths (UCLP). For more put UCLP in google. I interviewed Bill St Arnaud 2 weeks ago on UCLP. Here one of the purposes is to enable users at the edge to make connection oriented links between each other WITHOUT A CARRIER IN THE MIDDLE by partitioning a segment of a switch or switches between them. The concept is peer to peer and ad hoc. the goal is enabling customer owned and operated networks. As one of the players said on November 15th: "UCLP is simply a layer 1 provisioning and configuration tool. Although we use lightpaths it is not restricted to optical networks. Although it seems paradoxical I am not a big believer in AON, ASON or optical networking in general. I think the big benefit of DWDM networks will be to increase the richness of meshing of IP networks and to allow new business models of IP networking to evolve e.g customer owned and managed IP networks." Web services is being used to set up the lightpaths. If there is sonet underneath the folk with access to webservices can groom the light path from a ds3 on up and with further software development can groom less than a ds3. This stuff is not yet well understood outside these research network circles. I believe that it is hugely important and I will be devoting most of my time in december and january to explaining to a broader audience what these folk are doing. to the world of the best effort public internet it is utterly ALIEN. but my understanding is that it works. NOW. That it is a walled garden and that a big unknown is how long it will remain a walled garden.

...

Hmmm. Maybe I need to be a little more explicit in my concerns....

I am not concerned with the applications of the bandwidth that research folks are doing. Of course, research for research's sake has a value. I guess I meant... what is this interest in building a new network from scratch when all they are doing is using commercially available equipment provided by Cisco, and perhaps other vendors, etc? Regen is probably handled by the fiber vendors too... so where is the research in running a network?? Its trying to use the network as a service, of which, I am not sure there are many research interests that have more experience than the commercial folks.

By mentioning MPLS or another tunneling technology, I didn't mean to imply IPV4. Indeed, I meant that you can encapsulate whatever you want on an underlying network, or if you need raw access to the optics, you can always order wavelengths... The idea of building a network like this seemed like reinventing a dirt road next to an existing superhighway.

Likewise, with the Internet2 stuff, the underlying network is provided by commercial carriers... End equipment may be different, and that's the way it is with all commercial circuits today for standards-based communications/protocols..

So what is the value in dedicated research networks when the same facility can be provided by existing lit capacities by commercial networks? Is it a price delta? Or is it belief that the commercial folks don't meet the needs of the underlying applications? (if its the latter, I'd love to know what is being done).

To hash this out even more.... In regards to regional academic networks, I completely understand that there are significant economies by operating as a single entity. The complexity of running dark fiber in a regional network isn't really bad at all, and capacity can be added in pretty dynamic increments. However, once you start expanding to connect regional networks to each, it seems that the complexity increases far faster than the benefits -- and where universal/commercial carriers seem to have the greatest value offering.

What am I missing?

(P.S. have a nice holiday).

DJ

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