remember the "diameter of the internet"?

Mon Jun 17 22:20:20 UTC 2002

On Mon, 17 Jun 2002, brett watson wrote:

> i find in more random testing that i seem to be a minimum of 15 hops from
> anything, and it's not just the # of hops, it's the *paths* i travel.
> bouncing between two cities several times, on several different provider
> networks, from one border to the other.

The only thing I see you can really complain about is the depth of cox's
network, and to a lesser extent ATT's and XO's before it gets out to "the
internet".  As for inefficient routing...I can beat that.  My current
employer is just a few miles down the road from my previous employer.  A
traceroute from us to them isn't nearly as many hops as your traceroute, but
goes all the way from FL to TX and back to FL.

In your case, it would shave a bunch of hops if ATT and XO peered in
Dallas, but it's just not cost effective for everyone to peer everywhere.

For a while, we were both connected to a local exchange point of sorts.[1]
Almost nobody else came, but when we outgrew our connection and wanted to
upgrade, the people running the NAP wanted to bend us over for a larger
connection, so we left.  When the pointy-hairs make peering cost
prohibitive, even if the network admins think it'd be a great idea, it
doesn't happen.  AFAIK, they have no more peering customers.

 1. gsvlfl-br-1-e0-53.atlantic.net         0%    3    3     1    0    0      1
 2. gsvlflma-br-1-s0-0.atlantic.net        0%    3    3     0    0    0      0
 3. orldflma-br-1-s2-0.atlantic.net        0%    3    3     5    4   86    249
 4. orldflwcom-br-1-s1-1-1.atlantic.net    0%    3    3     4    4   81    234
 5. sl-gw8-orl-3-0-TS11.sprintlink.net     0%    3    3     5    5    5      6
 6. sl-bb21-orl-0-0.sprintlink.net         0%    3    3     6    5    5      6
 7. sl-bb23-fw-9-3.sprintlink.net          0%    3    3    72   34   47     72
 8. sl-bb21-fw-13-0.sprintlink.net         0%    3    3    33   32   33     33
 9. 144.232.19.42                          0%    2    2    36   35   36     36
10. pos3-0-622M.cr2.DAL1.gblx.net          0%    2    2    35   34   35     35
11. pos0-0-622M.cr1.HOU1.gblx.net          0%    2    2    39   39   39     40
12. pos0-0-155M.ar1.TPA1.gblx.net          0%    2    2    64   64   65     67
13. AgilityBroadband.s4-1-1-4-0.ar1.TPA    0%    2    2   150   80  115    150
14. yoda.fdt.net                           0%    2    2   134   83  108    134

[1] The local exchange point was actually the local government owned
utility company gone ISP.  They sold transit to a few local ISPs and to
the local university.  They offered peering connections as a sort of
NAP.  AFAIK, we were the only ones that bought one.

-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------------
 Jon Lewis *jlewis at lewis.org*|  I route
 System Administrator        |  therefore you are
 Atlantic Net                |
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