RE: Multihoming by IP Layer Address Rewriting (MILAR)

[RJ Atkinson <rja@inet.org>]

At 11:12 04/09/01, Iljitsch van Beijnum wrote:
>Chicken/egg: why would all those lines that come in in cities like
>Noordwijk, Domburg and Alkmaar go to Amsterdam? Because all the ISPs are
>there. 

Actually, no.  They go there because that is how the physical
fibre runs -- and those aren't the driving cities in any
event.  It is the fibre runs from Amsterdam to Paris, Frankfurt, 
Scandanavia, under the ocean, and other longer distance places 
that make AMS-IX interesting to ISPs as an interconnect.

>I seem to remember many lines going directly into NYC in the past, though.

Not as the trans-Atlantic fibre runs it doesn't -- and hasn't ever.
In NYC there is too much chance of a ship anchor or fishing boat
or dredge accidentally pulling up the cable when it gets near 
to the shoreline.

>Apart from being a regional/international exchange, the AMS-IX also
>functions as a national exchange. 

        ISPs are indifferent to national exchanges.  It is the regional/
international exchanges that make economic sense to ISPs today.

>So every country has at least one national exchange, and 
>not connecting to that exchange is very bad for business for ISPs.

        Not when I've seen the full economic analysis. For example 
in the EU our analysis was that LINX and AMS-IX were the only two
exchange points that made economic sense for the particular 
multi-continent ISP at the time (which is reasonably recently).

        However, lets take this offline unless it gets tied firmly
back to multi6 topics in the interest of good list S/N ratio. :-)

Ran
rja@inet.org