Cogent service

Fri Sep 20 16:54:39 UTC 2002

At 10:31 AM 9/20/2002 -0400, David Diaz wrote:
>   The only negative routing comments Ive heard are complaints about extra 
> hop counts.

Dave - I know you know this and you are referring to an issue that both of 
us have heard....

The hidden assumption here is that the extra hops implies worse 
performance. This is perception rather than real. One could quite easily 
put in place a VPN or MPLS substrate and make all destinations appear "one 
hop away" without changing the underlying technology or performance of the 
network.

A network application with clear latency/jitter/packet loss characteristics 
would be a more effective way to evaluate network fitness. I suspect what 
really happens is
a) the is a performance problem somewhere in the path
b) a traceroute is done
c) the traceroute is misinterpreted - "the problem is packets go all over 
the place!"
d) the misinterpretation is generalized to "more hops is bad"

from what I've seen anyway.

Bill