Extending a MAE connection ...

Wed Sep 24 02:29:31 UTC 1997

Here is a question.. a strange one, no less.

Is it feasible to do this:

  WASHINGTON DC                               NEW YORK CITY

			|   B R I D G E  |
MAE -- 100 Mb/s  -- | Cisco | -DS3- | Cisco | -- FDDI or -- (multiple
East 	FDDI        | 4700M |       | 4700M |    100Base T      peers)
giga						 Switch

Why? here's why.

Several folks in the same building in NYC want to connect to MAE-East.
But, we all don't want T1's or 10 Meg HLI to MAE-East, but DS3. So, this
allows us all to connect to the MAE, peer directly with others without an
intermediary ASN, and we can split the cost of the routers and the DS3. 

I know (at least, I can't think of any reason it can't be done) that is
can be done. The unanswered questions are:

1) Will MFS allow us to connect multiple Peers on the same FDDI port (from
thier webpage, it looks like it, but I am not sure).

2) Is there any technical reason that the above is bad? 

3) Because we do it the way shown above, does that make us look less
attractive (politically) ?

Thanks for any input on this. If there is anything I am missing, please
slap me. Thanks.