IXP

Tue Apr 21 20:21:22 UTC 2009

On Monday 20 April 2009 18:57:01 Niels Bakker wrote:
> Ethernet has no administrative boundaries that can be delineated.
> Spanning one broadcast domain across multiple operators is therefore
> a recipe for disaster.  

Isn't this the problem that NBMA networks like ATM were built for?  

> Cheap, fast, secure.  It is obvious which two Ethernet chose.

And which two ATM chose.  Although secondhand ATM gear is coming down in 
price....

ATM has its own issues, but the broadcast layer 2 problem isn't one of them.  
Seems to me Ethernet layer 2 stuff is just trying today to do what ATM gear did 
ten years ago.  Faster, of course, but still much the same.

But, again, too bad ATM was just too expensive, and too different, and Gigabit 
Ethernet just too easy (at the time).