From: Vadim Antonov [mailto:avg@kotovnik.com] Sent: Tuesday, January 09, 2001 3:32 AM

You mean you really have any other option when you want to interconnect few 300 Gbps backbones? :) Both mentioned boxes are in 120Gbps range fabric capacity-wise. If you think that's enough, i'd like to point out at the DSL deployment rate. Basing exchange points at something which is already inadequate is a horrific mistake, IMHO.

All one has to do is look at PAIX. The whole system looks like it is being used at real close to max capacity. I have a client at AboveNet and my systems are on a CerfNet block. PAIX is between us. I feel their pain.

Exchange points are major choke points, given that 80% or so of traffic crosses an IXP or bilaterial private interconnection. Despite the obvious advantages of the shared IXPs, the private interconnects between large backbones were a forced solution, purely for capacity reasons.

and they aren't keeping up with the growth. This entire IX thread has been interesting. But, it appears to be one of those "good theory, implementation sux" sort of things.