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Tue Jan 9 13:00:29 UTC 2001

At 03:32 -0800 2001/01/09, Vadim Antonov wrote:
>You mean you really have any other option when you want to interconnect
>few 300 Gbps backbones? :)  Both mentioned boxes are in 120Gbps range
>fabric capacity-wise.  If you think that's enough, i'd like to point out
>at the DSL deployment rate.  Basing exchange points at something which is
>already inadequate is a horrific mistake, IMHO.
>
>Exchange points are major choke points, given that 80% or so of traffic
>crosses an IXP or bilaterial private interconnection.  Despite the obvious
>advantages of the shared IXPs, the private interconnects between large
>backbones were a forced solution, purely for capacity reasons.
>
>--vadim

exchange points being choke points are more complex than that:

- backbones direct interconnect because it makes what was public 
traffic stats now private. also is more financially sound model than 
a 3rd party being involved. it minimize expenses.

- backbones limiting bandwidth into an Exchange Point also makes it a 
choke point.

- pulling out of an Exchange or demoting it's importance to a 
particular backbone means a justification for not having equitable 
peering.

- knowing so much traffic goes between backbones makes it a political 
tug of war that brought on direct interconnects.

- private interconnects were not a forced solution. they were for 
revenue and political, not purely for capacity reasons. there has 
been this notion of Tier 1,2,3 ... because of this.

- equitable financial return at an Exchange. means turning smaller 
peers into customers.

i am sure i have not nearly covered everything here.

-craig

>On Mon, 8 Jan 2001, Daniel L. Golding wrote:
>
>>  There are a number of boxes that can do this, or are in beta. It would be
>>  a horrific mistake to base an exchange point of any size around one of
>>  them. Talk about difficulty troubleshooting, not to mention managing
>>  the exchange point. Get a Foundry BigIron 4000 or a Riverstone
>>  SSR. Exchange point in a box, so to say. The Riverstone can support the
>>  inverse-mux application nicely, on it's own, as can a Foundry, when
>>  combined with a Tiara box.
>>
>>  Daniel Golding                           NetRail,Inc.
>>  "Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness"
>>
>>  On Mon, 8 Jan 2001, Vadim Antonov wrote:
>>
>>  > There's another option for IXP architecture, virtual routers over a
>>  > scalable fabric.  This is the only approach which combines capacity of
>>  > inverse-multiplexed parallel L1 point-to-point links and flexibility of
>>  > L2/L3 shared-media IXPs. The box which can do that is in field trials
>>  > (though i'm not sure the current release of software supports that
>>  > functionality).
>>  >
>>  > --vadim