Exchanges that matter...

Thu Dec 5 15:56:50 UTC 1996

So how do you reconcile the increasing number of private facilities? Although 
not exchange points in the truest sense ala MAEs and NAPs, they do carry an 
increasing percentage of cross-network traffic. The number of these types of 
facilities will grow. Maybe our difference here is that I count these and 
others do not. des

----------
From:  Alex.Bligh
Sent:  Wednesday, December 04, 1996 1:50 PM
To:  Todd Graham Lewis
Cc:  Danny Stroud; nanog at merit.edu
Subject:  Re: Exchanges that matter... 

> On Wed, 4 Dec 1996, Todd Graham Lewis wrote:
> 
> > Three NAPs per continent is plenty to serve this
> > purpose; anything over this is reckless.
> 
> Woops.  Three is a nice, round, theoretical number.  Five is fine.  Fifty
> is highly questionable to my mind.  Thinking that more NAPs solves the
> problem is just flat wrong.

Hmmm.. Not sure "continent" is the right granularity here. In North America
telecoms prices do not in general take enormous hikes when you cross state
borders. In (say) Europe they do. Lines between European countries often
cost more than lines between a given European country and the US. Also
content and thus traffic is far more localised to each country due to
language difficulties (well that part that doesn't go to English speaking
countries anyway). So 3-5 NAPs (or whatever) per homogenous area (homogenous
in content and in telecoms charging) perhaps. But ridiculous telco regulation
within Europe and language differences makes a very strong case for at least
one NAP per country (we dump about 50% of our UK traffic off in the UK).

Alex Bligh
Xara Networks