Public Interest Networks (try UCLP)

Gordon Cook cook at cookreport.com
Thu Nov 25 02:33:24 UTC 2004



Hi Deepak and Vicky,

I can't resist comment even though at this point the additional 
questions that i can answer are very limited.  For the past month I 
have been talking privately and more recently on a private mail list 
with folk at the heart of this.  Canarie under Bill St Arnaud has 
been the global leader for more than the past five years.  Tom 
Defanti and Joe Mambretti in chicago with the start tap and star 
light exchanges have been before National lambda rail (NRL) the main 
players in the US.  NRL is perceived as quite important in that it 
will permit american universities to experiment with their own fiber 
and wavelength as the canadians have been with CA*Net4 for years.  In 
Europe Kees neggers with Surfnet6 is doing the same thing.

As I understand it Internet 2 and Dante/Geant in europe are primarily 
carrier dependent and therefore for the most part onlookers.

NLR, Surfnet6, Ca*Net4 are or will be experimenting with User 
controlled light paths (UCLP).  For more put UCLP in google.  I 
interviewed Bill St Arnaud 2 weeks ago on UCLP.  Here one of the 
purposes is to enable users at the edge to make connection oriented 
links between each other  WITHOUT A CARRIER IN THE MIDDLE by 
partitioning a segment of a switch or switches between them.  The 
concept is peer to peer and ad hoc.  the goal is enabling customer 
owned and operated networks.

As one of the players said on November 15th:

"UCLP is simply a layer 1 provisioning and configuration tool. Although we
use lightpaths it is not restricted to optical networks.

Although it seems paradoxical I am not a big believer in AON, ASON or
optical networking in general.  I think the big benefit of DWDM networks
will be to increase the richness of meshing of IP networks and to allow
new business models of IP networking to evolve e.g customer owned and
managed IP networks."

Web services is being used to set up the lightpaths.  If there is 
sonet underneath the folk with access to webservices can groom the 
light path from a ds3 on up and with further software development can 
groom less than a ds3.

This stuff is not yet well understood outside these research network 
circles.  I believe that it is hugely important and I will be 
devoting most of my time in december and january to explaining to a 
broader audience what these folk are doing.

to the world of the best effort public internet it is utterly ALIEN. 
but my understanding is that it works. NOW.  That it is a walled 
garden and that a big unknown is how long it will remain a walled 
garden.








>>
>
>Hmmm. Maybe I need to be a little more explicit in my concerns....
>
>I am not concerned with the applications of the bandwidth that 
>research folks are doing. Of course,  research for research's sake 
>has a value. I guess I meant... what is this interest in building a 
>new network from scratch when all they are doing is using 
>commercially available equipment provided by Cisco, and perhaps 
>other vendors, etc? Regen is probably handled by the fiber vendors 
>too... so where is the research in running a network?? Its trying to 
>use the network as a service, of which, I am not sure there are many 
>research interests that have more experience than the commercial 
>folks.
>
>By mentioning MPLS or another tunneling technology, I didn't mean to 
>imply IPV4. Indeed, I meant that you can encapsulate whatever you 
>want on an underlying network, or if you need raw access to the 
>optics, you can always order wavelengths... The idea of building a 
>network like this seemed like reinventing a dirt road next to an 
>existing superhighway.
>
>Likewise, with the Internet2 stuff, the underlying network is 
>provided by commercial carriers... End equipment may be different, 
>and that's the way it is with all commercial circuits today for 
>standards-based communications/protocols..
>
>So what is the value in dedicated research networks when the same 
>facility can be provided by existing lit capacities by commercial 
>networks? Is it a price delta? Or is it belief that the commercial 
>folks don't meet the needs of the underlying applications? (if its 
>the latter, I'd love to know what is being done).
>
>To hash this out even more.... In regards to regional academic 
>networks, I completely understand that there are significant 
>economies by operating as a single entity. The complexity of running 
>dark fiber in a regional network isn't really bad at all, and 
>capacity can be added in pretty dynamic increments. However, once 
>you start expanding to connect regional networks to each, it seems 
>that the complexity increases far faster than the benefits -- and 
>where universal/commercial carriers seem to have the greatest value 
>offering.
>
>What am I missing?
>
>(P.S. have a nice holiday).
>
>DJ


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