More Questions of Exchange Points

Stephen J. Wilcox steve at opaltelecom.co.uk
Sun Apr 7 09:45:18 UTC 2002


On Sat, 6 Apr 2002, Ruomei Gao wrote:

> > > I did observe 2 exchange points have direct connection between them, does it mean
> > > they belong to the same switch fabiric?
> I mean in a trace (from traceroute probing), 2 exchange points (in Mr
> Woodcock's list) are next to each other.
> 
> .... ip of AS1, ip of EP1, ip of EP2, ip of AS2, ....
> 
> I thought they are connected to each other directly (probably the
> connecion is not as simple as the p2p link between 2 routers).

If they connected directly then you would see only two IPs when tracing
through, one on the ISP side of the router connecting the the IX and one
on the IX side of the next hop router.

Theres prolly some other magic going on to give that trace.

> > > Are those private peering points?
> >
> > 	confusion of terms.   When bits cross an administrative boundary
> 
> Sorry, I did confuse peering with transit. But I thought those private peering
> points are somewhat similiar too the IXs, ISPs exchange traffic there and they
> may also provide transit to the customers there.

The rule is there are no rules, stop drawing boxes

> > 	So.  Is this one exchange point (one switch), four exchange points
> > 	( 4 VLANS), or five exchange points ( 5 subnets)?  Which ones are
> > 	public? Which ones are private?  and why?
> 
> Is this case very common?

Why care, you are now at the level of asking individual ISPs how they
configure their network, and theres a lot of ISPs to ask before you can
begin to answer your question!

As per the previous emails, the only thing that matters here is what you
do on your network which therefore defines what you connect with, how you
connect up and how you configure.

I think your mistaken to believing the Internet is structured and
organised in some way! :)

Prof Einstein can offer you some wise words to help right now- that it is
all relative.

Steve





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