different thinking on exchanging traffic

Wed Jun 3 08:55:12 UTC 1998

On Mon, 1 Jun 1998, Randy Bush wrote:

> if it is really a local-only exchange point, i.e. no one is using it for
> transit, and all are only exchanging local routes, lots of folk out here
> would be very interested in real measurements.  like how much of an isp's
> traffic can they actually shed locally?  not conjecture, real data.

Here in Utah, we have the UtahREP http://utah.rep.net with about 12 or so
participants which are generally the largest local ISPs as well as the
Utah Education Network.  Soon Electric Lightwave and US West will be
connecting to the UtahREP as well.

Currently about 5%-15% of my traffic gets routed over the UtahREP.  Of
course the local gamers love it for the very low latency connection to all
the Quake2 servers hosted by local UtahREP connected ISPs.  Many of the
ISPs connected to the UtahREP send newsfeeds to each other.  Also, we have
created an "UtahREP Caching Proxy Mesh" using ICP (Inter Cache Protocol) 
which is working quite well.  I have about 95% participation rate from my
dialup users (using a proxy autoconfig file), and I have just broken the
60% hit rate mark. 

Regional Exchange Points are an excellent idea.

Dax Kelson
Internet Connect, Inc.