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RE: geo short vs long term? [Re: Geo pros and cons]
The lessons are pretty clear. I remember a time, not so long ago, when the shortest path from France to the UK actually was through Princeton, and the shortest path from some parts of France to other parts was through either Amsterdam or Geneva. The reality is that network topology is primarily driven by network economics, which themselves are only modestly driven by geography.
In theory, it seems easier to lay fiber over short distances, but this is one of those cases where the difference between theory and practice is even greater in practice than in theory. In practice, you get into things like right of ways that prevent crossing streets, traffic pattern that are not local, satellites that don't particularly care about imediate proximity, or the simple fact that laying fiber accross a body of water is simpler that doing the same accross a mountain ridge. Then, you get competition between providers, and all sorts of non technical reasons such as trust, business affinity, etc.
By the way, these non technical reasons apply also to various "virtual addressing" schemes that propose to use a provider independent overlay on top of a provider addressed network. Any kind of virtual aggregation is much more likely to be centered on business relations than on geography.
________________________________
From: Iljitsch van Beijnum [mailto:iljitsch@muada.com]
Sent: Sun 4/6/2003 10:40 AM
To: Randy Bush
Cc: Joe Abley; multi6@ops.ietf.org
Subject: Re: geo short vs long term? [Re: Geo pros and cons]
On zondag, apr 6, 2003, at 15:48 Europe/Amsterdam, Randy Bush wrote:
>> Trying to get something right that was done wrong in the past isn't
>> "repeating".
> not taking lessons from history and physical reality is naive at best,
> and dangerous at worst.
Is it really that hard to let go of preconceived notions?
The only "lessons from history" I can find are discussions that went
nowhere because neither party bothered to get into enough detail to see
if something useful could be done or not. Physical reality is that
every meter of fiber costs money. There are only two cost-effective
ways to connect networks: over the shortest possible distances, or by
aggregating as much traffic and as many logical connections over a
single circuit as possible. Both allow good geographical aggregation.