Actually, I think the issue is not about moving. It is more about developing *new* facilities now to handle the forecasted demands. As the Internet becomes more pervasive and the expectations of the users (and investors) become higher, we (the Internet access provider community) will need to have better, cheaper, faster, more resilient, etc. etc. networks. I find it hard to fathom a completely pervasive network routing through a few exchange points. As the national telco infrastructure evolved over the last few decades (with CO's on just about every corner) so will go the Internet. I admire the foresight of those attempting to develop new exchange points. I do not envy the uphill battle they have before them. des ---------- From: owner-nanog@merit.edu on behalf of Alec H. Peterson Sent: Monday, December 02, 1996 10:07 AM To: Nathan Stratton Cc: Paul A Vixie; nanog@merit.edu Subject: Re: Exchanges that matter... On Nov 29, 1996, Nathan Stratton wrote:
Yes, true, it would be great of MAE-West of PACBell just moved to PAIX, but I don't think it is worth adding a view when you have established NAPs in the area. I learned this when I when I was building Atlanta-NAP I wanted to build a place better then PAIX (and they did the best job so far), but I found out that people don't care. If I build a NAP that was 100 times nicer then MAE-East (and that would not be hard at all) people would not just move.
Asking people to relocate their high-bandwidth peering point connections is not likely to be successful unless you give them a cheap, easy way to do it. Using the MAE-east/Atlanta-NAP example, why would people pay thousands more dollars per month to backhaul traffic to Atlanta when they can exchange it locally? It just doesn't make sense, and really defeats the purpose of having a local exchange point. Sure, the number of hops would be the same, but if a packet has to move between two DC-area providers, it makes little sense for it to travel down the east coast and back up again. But the biggest reason that people will not move their peering point connections from one place to another is that it will break things. Also, it will be a huge pain in the ass. If things are functioning reasonably well, there is little point in moving everything around. Alec -- +------------------------------------+--------------------------------------+ |Alec Peterson - chuckie@panix.com | Panix Public Access Internet and UNIX| |Network Administrator/Architect | New York City, NY | +------------------------------------+--------------------------------------+
On Tue, 3 Dec 1996, Danny Stroud wrote:
Actually, I think the issue is not about moving. It is more about developing *new* facilities now to handle the forecasted demands.
Certainly a valid pov.
As the Internet becomes more pervasive and the expectations of the users (and investors) become higher, we (the Internet access provider community) will need to have better, cheaper, faster, more resilient, etc. etc. networks.
Yep, uh huh.
I find it hard to fathom a completely pervasive network routing through a few exchange points.
Why not? More below.
As the national telco infrastructure evolved over the last few decades (with CO's on just about every corner) so will go the Internet.
But with most of the major backbone providers we're rapidly approaching POPs in every city as it is, and any finer granularity really doesn't make much sense, except maybe in the mega-cities. Exchange points are not analogous to COs; major routing problems ensue as the number of exchange points increase. E.g., if there were three EPs per continent, and if each major network connected to these three EPs, and a requirement for connecting to the EPs was that you have a fully redundant backbone, what would be the problem?
I admire the foresight of those attempting to develop new exchange points. I do not envy the uphill battle they have before them. des
I don't envy them either, but I'm beginning to question the "a chicken in every pot and a NAP on every corner" approach to network design. Of course, I don't strictly have to worry about these things; that's why I and AOL and most network operators have upstream network providers. __ Todd Graham Lewis Linux! Core Engineering Mindspring Enterprises tlewis@mindspring.com (800) 719 4664, x2804
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Todd Graham Lewis