At 20:38 10/22/96, Gordon Cook wrote:

John, you say there is no benefit to be gained by large providers using anything other than private inter-connects. may i refine that question slightly and ask: benefit **to whom?** to the large provider? If the question of benefit is limited in this manner, i'd guess that your statement is quite correct.

Gordon, It's not a question of large or small; it's a question of traffic volume. Creating multi-provider interconnects makes sense, right up until the aggregation pushes the technology into a higher-cost or higher-risk category. It's hard enough getting stable high-speed equipment; intentionally bringing multiple high-speed traffic flows together when you can easily do a mesh of private interconnects makes little sense.

When you get big enough, you to can connect to the internet at the very apex as demarcated by major naps in the us and soon in asia and europe.

*BUT* here is my question. Don't private interconnects essentially provide a new apex for the internet? One that pushes interconnects at the major exchange points down a level. ... now you may say that from a competitive point of view this makes no difference. perhaps. But what if the big four no longer see the need to upgrade their bandwidth INTO and OUT OF exchange points?

For relatively small traffic volumes, the shared interconnects work fine. Upgrading the bandwidth INTO and OUT of these points is definitely happening, but there's often a higher payoff in taking a major flow off the public interconnects into a private interconnect. Providers do have good reason to upgrade their public interconnects but principally after this phase of major traffic migration to private interconnects has been completed. /John