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North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical Re: remember the "diameter of the internet"?
VA> Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2002 11:52:41 -0700 (PDT) VA> From: Vadim Antonov VA> Regarding the diameter of the Internet - I'm still trying to VA> figure out why the hell anyone would want to have "edge" VA> routers (instead of dumb TDMs) if not for inability of IOS to VA> support large numbers of virtual interfaces. Reasons I hear: 1. It's more expensive. Unh? Take a six-port router filled with dual [chan-]DS3 cards. 12 x 45 = 540 Mbps max. Real traffic probably makes it to 200 Mbps on a regular basis. A router like a 7206VXR can't be fed any more cards. Now let's take a switch. Feed it the same line cards, run frame, and convert frame cells to 802.1q-tagged GigE (native big MTU) to feed to the router. Dumb switch is cheaper than router. Backhaul two GigE (redundancy) links to the router. Scales much better. One could even have a much bigger switch, yet small dual-GigE core router. 2. It's wasteful. Just how much Internet traffic is "local"? We're not talking telephones, here. A little traffic _might_ go switch-->router-->switch. But just how much does that backhaul cost? Aggregate as cheaply as possible... TDM was great when we didn't have the CPU power to build a "big enough" packet-switched network. But I think that time has passed. All IMHO, of course. VA> Same story goes for "clusters" of backbone routers. Because meshes (messes?) of cables are cool? ;-) Short of a "big enough" router not existing... I don't know. Eddy -- Brotsman & Dreger, Inc. - EverQuick Internet Division Bandwidth, consulting, e-commerce, hosting, and network building Phone: +1 (785) 865-5885 Lawrence and [inter]national Phone: +1 (316) 794-8922 Wichita ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Date: Mon, 21 May 2001 11:23:58 +0000 (GMT) From: A Trap <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Subject: Please ignore this portion of my mail signature. These last few lines are a trap for address-harvesting spambots. Do NOT send mail to <[email protected]>, or you are likely to be blocked.
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