North American Network Operators Group

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Re: an over-the-top data center

  • From: Jean-François Mezei
  • Date: Mon Dec 01 14:05:54 2008

Patrick W. Gilmore wrote:

> End of day, an IXP is not some magical thing.  It is an ethernet  
> switch allowing multiple networks to exchange traffic more easily than  
> direct interconnection - and that is all it should be.  It should not  
> be mission critical.  Treating it as such raises the cost, and  
> therefore barrier to entry, which lowers its value.

Exchange points are often located in the same building as a carrier
hotel which houses infrastructure for many ISPs and many transit providers.

If you consider the internet is used only by teenage males to learn
about female anatomy (pictures and movies), then your statement is
acceptable. But with the Internet now used for serious applications, the
focus point of a carrier hotel and exchange becomes much more mission
critical.

Ane because it is a focus point, it becomes much harder to have
redundancy in the buildings (to provide for disaster tolerance). So the
natural avenue is to strenghten/re-inforce your one central building.

But availability s measured by the weakest link. You can have a bunker
data centre like the one shown in this thread, but if, at the end of the
day, all of a city's fibre links to the rest of the world follow the
same railway track right of way to exit the city (and cross the same
bridges) , then you still have a weak spot and central points of failure.