concern over public peering points [WAS: Peering point speed publicly available?]

Tue Jul 6 01:43:14 UTC 2004

vgill at vijaygill.com (vijay gill) writes:
> Throwing ethernet cables over the ceiling does not scale.

i think it's important to distinguish between "things aol and uunet don't
think are good for aol and uunet" and "things that aren't good for anybody."

what i found through my PAIX experience is that the second tier is really
quite deep and broad, and that the first tier doesn't ignore them like their
spokesmodels claim they do.

what i found in helping to hone the ssni approach is that while public peering
"ethernet style" is dead, vni/pni peering is alive and well.  anyone who does
not agree is free to behave that way.  but it's not useful to try to dissuade
cooperating adults from peering any way they want to.

the interesting evolutionary aspect to this is that vni/pni peering starting
with atm and moving to pni doesn't work at all, because atm by and large has
a high cost per bit at the interface, and a low top end, and usually doesn't
mandate co-location.  but vni/pni peering over 802.1Q usually does succeed,
because of the low cost per bit at the interface, the obscenely high top end,
and the greater likelihood that the vni parties are co-located and so can
switch to pni when the traffic volume warrants it.

i've been told that if i ran a tier-1 i would lose my love for the vni/pni
approach, which i think scales quite nicely even when it involves an ethernet
cable through the occasional ceiling.  perhaps i'll eat these words when and
if that promotion comes through.  meanwhile, disintermediation is still my
favorite word in the internet dictionary.  i like it when one's competitors
are free to do business with each other, it leads to more and better
innovation.
-- 
Paul Vixie