US-Asia Peering

Fri Jan 10 12:54:27 UTC 2003

On Fri, 10 Jan 2003, Neil J. McRae wrote:

> > Theres an increasing number of "psuedo-wire" connections tho, you could regard
> > these L2 extensions an extension of the switch as a whole making it
> > international. 
> 
> Thats not really applicable in my view, the psuedo-wire is no
> different to a long fibre extension and they are only used to connect
> specific parties not IXP's. 

Sure, purpose is different but functionally the pseudowire is the same as the
exchange, a collection of L2 devices and either has the potential in the event
of a L2 issue (arp storm, STP) to affect the other in the absence f any L3
boundary. The fact that it only connects a single device is arbitrary.

In response to Randy and Bill(s), this seems to come down to a trade off of
commercial vs technical. A lot of us agree this is technically not the best way
and produces instabilities with the potential to take out major chunks of
internet but it is cheap and this means people will adopt this way of doing it,
unfortunately as this has now happened it means those opposed to the idea will
have to also consider this as an option if they are to compete.

The growing number of things in the Internet business which nowadays need to
more cheap and less technically sound is something I find disheartening.

Steve