Singing the Southwest Networking Blues

Mon Feb 10 06:55:26 UTC 2003

Out in the badlands of New Mexido where the tumbleweeds blow, Tier 1
POPs are nowhere to be seen.  I get long-hauled to a different state
just for an Internet T1 from UUNET.  Unfortunately, Albuquerque is an
important business hub in my company, and we have several locations in
NM & CO.  But the rest are on the east coast and down south.  A couple
of pictures tell the story:

       http://www.swcp.com/pcaskey/tmp/NANOG.html

I generally get good service with all my sites having UUNET connections,
but it's kind of a bummer being routed through Los Angeles just to get
to San Antonio.  In fact, I'd be happy to buy a point-point line to the
east, perhaps to my locations in D.C. or Research Triangle, if I could
get any kind of decent latency guarantee.  Then set up GRE tunnels to
control traffic flow.  Or maybe I could stay on the Internet, if a route
could be found that would drift generally eastward, instead of going
west and almost doubling the geographic distance.

Offers and suggestions welcome.  I'm at NANOG 27 in Phoenix right now.
So far, the best theories involve some type of Sprint connection to
Dallas / Fort Worth, because Sprint seems to have that path figured out
better than UUNET.  Then cross to UUNET on the private exchange in
FtWorth.  The latency through that exchange appears quite favorable.
There'd be some addressing and routing issues to work out.  My company
does have an AS number, but we're not multi-homed, yet.  I need to keep
my UUNET line(s), so I'm looking for an addition, not a replacement.

I would have to laugh if I could get to UUNET faster over Sprint than
over UUNET.  But that may be the way things are in the Wild West.
TIA for any insights, and of course I'll summarize what I learn.

-- 
Paul Caskey	                  Albuquerque, NM, USA
Information System Architect      pcaskey at swcp.com                  
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"You're basically killing each other to see who's got the better
imaginary friend."              --Rich Jeni, on war over religion