the Internet Backbone

Sun Apr 7 01:00:03 UTC 1996

I agree with Dave S., either people are going to believe the marketing 
hype or become educated about what matters relative to the Internet
topology.  Most are just going to believe the hype so publishing a 
document with artificial labels is most likely not meaningful.
(ref: Bradner testing and equipment throughput results - the vendors
make the equipment do well in the tests but the real world is a 
different story).

In particular, the item:

    -- need special measures to deal with BGP scaling issues inside
       their AS (or multiple AS) such as confederations, clusters, etc.

worries me; this is like announcing at the UN that you can only vote
if you have nuclear weapons.  Some will be needless encouraged to add
complexity to their networks simply to be a "Tier 1".

Communications Week (April 1, pp 135-139) has the usual limited view
of the world, but its better than nothing, with some related 
commentary from noted dignitaries.  There is a map, showing interconnects
and trying to explain how they work.

It's probably on their web page somewhere 
http://techweb.cmp.com/cw/current
but I couldn't find it (Paul F. is the search tool guy in our group :-).

have fun
					dave