This is not your father's Internet (Was: 16 vs 32 bit ASNs [Re: BBC does IPv6 ;)

Michael.Dillon at radianz.com Michael.Dillon at radianz.com
Wed Dec 1 10:54:07 UTC 2004


> Bundusch Germania Politzei
> 
> Forgive my lack of German spelling/grammar, but, hopefully I came close.

*choke* *splutter*

Bundesgrenzschutz

Bundes = of the Federation (Federal)
Grenz = Border
Schutz = Protection

Interesting example. One might expect this organization
to have many locations, widely seperated, at the edge
of a larger network. In other words, the Internet in
Germany is better connected in the large cities than
in many (not all) of the far flung border towns. So they
need to get connectivity from many suppliers depending
on who supplies a particular town, but they want to
run a single unified network. It just looks more like
the tortilla wrapping than the taco filling that 
people draw for most networks. What!? That was 
supposed to be a picture of a cloud?

In any case, my company runs a similar sort of
network. The main network doesn't peer with 
ISPs and is not connected to the Internet anywhere.
The 10,000 or so locations connected to our network
all presumably have Internet connectivity as well.
So if you draw the Internet cloud, then add lots
spikes sticking out and then connect the spikes
with a thin tortilla, you have our network as the
wrapper and our customer's Internet connections 
as the spikes.

Every one of those spikes is multihomed to us 
and at least one ISP even if you cannot see our
routes or our AS. And we are not the only company
to operate one of these Community-Of-Interest
Networks. The European auto industry has one. 
The international air industry has one. We have
competitors in the financial services industry
who have them.

In fact, consider this. What if the majority
of IP network growth in the next decade, is in
building these COINs? These are all internets
and therefore they require globally unique 
address space and globally unique ASNs. This
is not your father's Internet anymore.

--Michael Dillon




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