Hola,
> > > In other words, the big players don't like the "open" naps and
> > > are deliberately not installing sufficient bandwidth to them?
> > No, the open NAP's are bad engineering and the big players are fixing the
> > topology by routing around them.
No no no no no.
> But people keep claiming that some naps are well engineered and have
> excess capacity and that the problem is the size of the pipes leading
> to them. Adding more pipes is easy enough, leading to the conclusion
> that there are other factors at play.
Yes, well, maybe, no, not really. (except about the more pipes, see [*])
The NAPs are well engineered (for the most part) and are rarely if
ever the source of ANY packet loss, ANY latency, or ANY
congestion.
Period. (well, not really... the links into the IXPs are often
full, but not because they "can't afford another link" or "want to
squeeze someone" but rather because they put all the sympathy
peers on that one link/ixp (hint: rhymes with Twit, sort of...)
The ISSUE at stake here is "how well connected" a particular
ISP/NSP is to all the other NSP/ISPs.
Now examine at the (virtual/peering) connection between two
providers, Bigger and Smaller.
Bigger wants Smaller to pay. Smaller wants to pretend they're
bigger, and not pay. Bigger tells Smaller to take off. Smaller
then has to buy connectivity to Bigger, and generally gets a
poor-er connection (more hops).
Larger wants to peer with Bigger. Bigger wants to peer with
Larger. Would they rather peer betwixt themsleves, or through a
public exchange?
Customer sits behind Smaller. Customer signed a contract w/ no
QOS. Customer should give money/resources to IPPM.
In all of the above three issues (granted they're created for the
purpose...) the larger issues is economics and politics. Not
technology or capacity.
This whole thing smacks of child labor, minimum wage, and unsafe
medicine. The public is too silly/stupid/naieve to demand quantifiable
numbers tied into contracts. Elysium forbid that the government ever
mandates it....
-alan
[*] adding more pipes into an IXP is not a trivial issue,
certainly it is possible to design a system that allows you
some semblance of balance across the lines, but the linear
growth of lines is not at all scalable, especially as the
traffic grows in certain regions and the economies of scale
for regional/private IXPs increase.....