North American Network Operators Group

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Re: florida ix(en) facing south

  • From: Christian Kuhtz
  • Date: Thu Dec 21 13:55:44 2000

On Thu, Dec 21, 2000 at 12:46:38PM -0500, Jeff Barrows wrote:
[..]
>   - Miami Internet Exchange (FloridaMIX, a Bell South
>     initiative for a distributed exchange.)
> 
>   Last time I checked, both of these had essentially the
>   same objective, with differences in the areas of
>   architecture and personal interests.  
[..]

Since Deron and I are working on this project, please allow me to add a few
things here. Perhaps they can clarify a few things.

There's a perception here that by design the NAP is intended to be a carrier
jail or trap.  That's not the case.  And I don't think it is just Deron or 
myself suffering from amnesia at the moment ;-).

The intent is to provide an exchange point where you can colo or participate 
from off-site in an existing carrier hotel or data center or whatever.  And
this is one of the dominating criteria in the design.  The choice which one
you select is yours depending on what your specifc preferences are.  We try
to be very flexible to the point that we are location independant, but there
are probably some economic realities which will set in soone or later.

The Florida-MIX is designed to provide several different ways of connecting to
the NAP, and I am not aware of any restrictions which tie you to a particular 
carrier.  In fact, we're trying to provide a peering service which is not tied 
to any transport in particular, and extend peering beyond IPv4 to MPLS & IPv6 
etc.  The current plans is to introduce these services in phases during the 
course of 2001.

I understand (and since I wasn't born into this company, I also share) some of 
the feelings and reservations against RBOCs.  However, I think in 
BellSouth.net's defence, there are several fine IP geeks working on this 
project, and a lot of brains and effort spent on worrying about how to make 
this successful and we're trying our very best to do this right (and it doesn't
just stop at giving the exchange enough bw, it is also a matter of making the 
operations side working smoothly and efficient).  I'll rather quit here before 
I sound like I'm spewing PR BS.

So, I would like to extend the offer to anyone interested and with specific
comments or questions to contact Deron and/or myself so that we may try to 
answer them as best as we can.  I think it is foolish to believe that any one
organization has all the answers and we welcome feedback and input.

Cheers,
Chris

--
Christian Kuhtz <[email protected]> -wk, <[email protected]> -hm
Sr. Architect, Engineering & Architecture, BellSouth.net, Atlanta, GA, U.S.
"I speak for myself only.""