Airplane crashing into Atlanta-NAP

Sun Oct 27 16:21:57 UTC 1996

On Sun, 27 Oct 1996, Chris A. Icide wrote:

> Now that I've thrown in my share of late night sarcasm,  It would interest
> me greatly to understand exactly why you came to the following
> conclusions:
> 
> 1.	The "operation" in Atlanta is Mickey Mouse

Both the Internet and the POTS system are telecommunications networks that
are vital to the modern economy. POTS moreso than the Internet right now
but the Internet is certainly heading in that direction. POTS exchanges
are always in ground floor concrete buildings with no windows or
underground. But in Atlanta they stick it up on the 5th floor of some
office building?!?!?!?

> 2.	The floor # of a bulding affects the quality of the Exchange Point
> 3.	The type of building affect the quality of the Exchange Point

I cannot explain these ones but have reached this conclusion from
observing how the phone company builds and locates its exchanges. 

> 4.	A city the size of Atlanta needs more than 1 Exchange Point

It has a lot more than one POTS exchange. Thus it will need more than 
1 Internet exchange. Why should the packets from every video-call in the
city all travel downtown when frequently the two parties live in the same
neighborhood?

> Truly I would be very interested in your thoughts on these items, as
> well may a few other folks on this list.

I'm taking a long term view in which ISP's are just another form of
telephone company. Many ISP's are now getting to the size where they can
consider aquiring strategically located properties, building concrete
block exchange/colo buildings, wiring up entire office towers with 
IP fiber and even running their own fibre in some case, especially in new
subdivisions. 

By today's standards Atlanta-NAP may be a really great thing, but too soon
we will discover that we aren't living in "today" any more and the
standards will be different.

Michael Dillon                   -               ISP & Internet Consulting
Memra Software Inc.              -                  Fax: +1-604-546-3049
http://www.memra.com             -               E-mail: michael at memra.com