The choice of hardware is really dependant on quite a bit. Obviously one needs a highly reliable infrastructure. Also one will want to choose something that has the ability to grow with the exchange points needs. Additionally, current high traffic exchange points are at least showing some of the faults in the hardware they are currently using. However, I think at least today, one could generalize, and come to the following conclusions. If you are looking to create an exchange point where peering is forced, (i.e. a central routing model), You could choose to use some high performance router. The problems one may run into here is port cost and administrative costs. Additionally, the current batch of super-high performance routers are fairly new, and one may end up spending alot of time fighting bugs. If you are going to go with the more common bridged type of exchange point, you have a fairly wide choice of hardware, including FDDI, Fast Ethernet, ATM, etc. Problems with all these technologies are well documented, and there are several exchange operators who are using at least one of these technologies, and would best have the detailed answers to your questions. However, it might be of relevence to note that the Internet 2 project has chosen ATM as the technology of choice for the MEGA and GIGA pops of the new network. With the detail of information one must provide to recieve federal funding, you might be able to dig up some good analysis from an Internet 2 submittal. Chris A. Icide At 10:55 AM 10/23/97 -0700, bmanning@ISI.EDU wrote:

...

Anyone willing to speak forth and give notes of their experience in setting up a NAP.

Questions we have in mind are:

Go with a Digital GIGAswitch/ATM or FDDI? Or should we go for a GSR 12000?

The very high traffic users will be put directly on ports on the GIGAswitch or GSR. The others will be sharing FDDI.

thanks

I expect there will be several folks who will be at this NANOG who might be able to answer. Whether they are willing is another matter. At previous NANOGs there have been some discussions on exchange architectures and scalability tradeoffs. You might find some good stuff in the archives.

-- --bill

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On Fri, 24 Oct 1997, Neil J. McRae wrote:

If you have to ask this kind of question then I'd ask again if you really want to setup a NAP.

Regards, Neil.

Think of this as a sanity check if you will. This is just to leverage off of others peoples experiences. vijay

On Fri, 24 Oct 1997 09:59:05 -0400 "Alec H. Peterson" <ahp@hilander.com> wrote:

I disagree. If a person thinks he knows everything about designing and implementing a NAP without input from those who will be connecting to it, I wouldn't want to connect there. Why not get input from others?

True, but surely there are basics that you would already have researched, btw http://engr.ans.net has some very intersting things on ATM NAP. Cheers, Neil -- Neil J. McRae. Alive and Kicking. Domino: In the glow of the night. neil@DOMINO.ORG NetBSD/sparc: 100% SpF (Solaris protection Factor) Free the daemon in your <A HREF="http://www.NetBSD.ORG/">computer!</A>