US-Asia Peering

Sun Jan 12 20:08:33 UTC 2003

	Bill,

On lördag, jan 11, 2003, at 01:38 Europe/Stockholm, William B. Norton 
wrote:

>
> If what you are saying is true, I'd really like to hear just a couple 
> of insurmountable technical problems with WAN L2.5 infrastructure 
> interconnecting IX switches. For the sake of argument and to clarify 
> the discussion (Paul) let's make a few assumptions:
>
> 1) We are talking about an operations model where IX switches are 
> operated by a single company.
> 2)  The IX switches are interconnected by MPLS by a transport provider 
> offering that service.
> 3) An ISP on one switch creates a VLAN for peering with ISPs on any of 
> the other switches. This ISP VLAN is only for peering with the ISP 
> that created this VLAN. Since he is paying for the VLAN traffic he has 
> this right.
> 4) The cost of transporting the traffic between the switches is bourne 
> by a transport provider who in turn charges the ISP that created the 
> VLAN in question.
>
> I can articulate a half dozen reasons why this is a good idea. Please 
> share with us why this is a such a bad idea. If it has been tried 
> before, it would be helpful to point to specific the case and why it 
> failed, the technical failure scenario. I'd like to hear why/how it 
> was worse by the distance between switches.
>

How do you see the failed AMS-IX expansion fit into this?

My (very simplified) summary of what happened was that :

a) ISPs where worried of the stability of the exchange (if I remember 
correctly Jesper Skriver made a good mail on this)
b) The large operators saw that AMS-IX would be directly competing with 
them on transit and transport revenues and therefor in the end where 
not interested in AMS-IX.

Note that there still was many (mostly small) ISPs that where in favour 
of the expansion.

At the time of the origin of the discussion I was peering co-ordinator 
at KPNQwest, and would have pulled-out of AMS-IX if the plans (and KQ 
..:) ) would have moved on.

Best regards,

- kurtis -