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North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical Re: different thinking on exchanging traffic
On Fri, May 22, 1998 at 10:02:47PM -0500, Tim Salo wrote: > I have two conflicting notions about the the interesting possibilities > offered by nationwide layer-two services: > > o Layer-two services with distance-insensitive pricing, such as > ATM, create some interesting opportunities. If it doesn't cost > any more to get across the country than to get across town, why > should I build a local NAP rather than a nationwide NAP? (Unless, > of course, I am a RBOC and am administratively constrained from > offering inter-LATA service.) (I am also ignoring a comparison > of a NAP-in-a-closet/POP/parking ramp versus a > NAP-in-a-metropolitan-area; this is e-mail to nanog, not a > paper for Sigcomm.) Perhaps more relevant today, why should I > build a regional Gigapop, _if_ my ATM pricing is truly > distance-insensitive? (There might be an answer to the last > question, I really don't know. But, I keep asking.) > > In other words, if pricing is distance-insensitive, why do I > need local exchanges? Forgive me, but kee-rist! Haven't I bung this drum enough this month? Because, more and more as the net penetrates, the traffic is more and more _local_. Geographically local. My point about MAE-East-in-a-garage was that there was only _one_ of them; where it _was_ was only thrown in for spite. Especially as the net becomes more used for telecommuting, there is absolutely _no_ sense in my having to telnet from St Pete 30 miles to Tampa via a router in Maryland or San Francisco, "just" because the two sites in question decided to buy their connectivity from different backbones. > o Distance matters. It is easy to configure an IP network over > a large layer-two service that bounces packets around the country, > (because IP routing protocols generally think in terms of hop > count, not [physical] distance). It would be nice if > routing protocols thought about [physical] distance, rather > than require the network designer to be responsible for > designing the network such that considerations of physical > distance were implicit in the network design. Of course, in the > good old days before distance-insensitive-priced services, this > wasn't such an issue. I don't know if it's _possible_ to push this into the routing layer -- even if the routing protocol decides not to ship those 30 mile packets 3000 miles... it doesn't _matter_ if there's no link to _put them on_. It's obvious that it's time for my nap (no pun intended), my underscore quotient has shot through the roof. Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth [email protected] Member of the Technical Staff Unsolicited Commercial Emailers Sued The Suncoast Freenet "Two words: Darth Doogie." -- Jason Colby, Tampa Bay, Florida on alt.fan.heinlein +1 813 790 7592 Managing Editor, Top Of The Key sports e-zine ------------ http://www.totk.com
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