different thinking on exchanging traffic

Tue May 26 21:41:50 UTC 1998

Well, the problem is of course that local exchanges concentrate power
and make backbone packet transport into a commoditiy with machines
(routers) making buying decisions in realtime.

Dirk

On Tue, May 26, 1998 at 03:38:24PM -0400, Damian O'Gorman wrote:
> > Of course, not every local ISP participates.  The state subsidized
> > education network doesn't connect, nor do some the dialup ISPs.  But
> > it gets a reasonable level of support from several of the larger
> > area providers.
> >
> 
> The same type of project was attemted in Toronto. CANIX was essentially set
> upto cross connect traffic rather than having to traverse the entire US
> network to get
> to the other side of Toronto. The problem was, it became an exclusive
> bilateral peering
> arrangemt with 6 players. That was 1 1/2 years ago. Currently only 2 are
> peered. What in fact was the point. UUnet and Sprint were the big players up
> here and nobody appears to want to cooperate.
> 
> > But exchange points are one of those weird creatures.  If I'm paying
> > a big expensive backbone, why would I get anything from a local exchange
> > point?  And of course, the ever popular "What's the catch?"  Since
> > local exchange points are generally run on a non-profit basis, that
> > means there isn't a large marketing organization, or a huge gaggle of
> > salespeople trying to sell it.  If you like, we can call it a "managed
> > connection" and charge you $1,000/month.  But that seems steep for
> > essentially a port on a catalyst switch.
> >
> >
> 
> Damian O'Gorman
> 