RE: Straw-man charter

["Smith, Donald" <Donald.Smith@qwest.com>]

Transit provider (TP) sounds good to me.

Since this document was originally meant to cover Network Elements I
would assert networks with a large number of 
NEs are more complex. In most cases such a network will be compromised
of multiple vendor's and models of NE's.
(Edge, Border, Core, Aggregation ...).
So my definition complexity would be something like this

Complexity = N * (#routers * #vendors * #models)

Donald.Smith@qwest.com GCIA
http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0xAF00EDCC
pgpFingerPrint:9CE4 227B B9B3 601F B500  D076 43F1 0767 AF00 EDCC
Brian Kernighan jokingly named it the Uniplexed Information and
Computing System (UNICS) as a pun on MULTICS.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-opsec@psg.com [mailto:owner-opsec@psg.com] On 
> Behalf Of David Meyer
> Sent: Thursday, June 03, 2004 9:36 AM
> To: Smith, Donald
> Cc: gmj@pobox.com; Ross Callon; opsec@ops.ietf.org
> Subject: Re: Straw-man charter
> 
> 
> On Thu, Jun 03, 2004 at 09:02:39AM -0600, Smith, Donald wrote:
> >> NSP should imply additional Networking services beyond what an ISP 
> >> traditionally offers. The reason for a split like this is 
> NSP's tend 
> >> to have LARGE FAST backbones and LOTS of routers.
> >> ISP's may have a single router with fairly low bandwidth. 
> They may also
> >> sell basically ONE service (dialup, wireless ...).
> 
> 	This generalization really doesn't seem hold, and at best
> 	is a moving target (assets are acquired, divested, etc over
> 	time). The Tier 1..n classification isn't clean either
> 	(what exactly comprises a tier 1? Member of the skitter
> 	core? Other?).
> 
> >> I would be just as willing to call such providers SSP 
> (small service 
> >> providers | simple service providers) but do not want to insult 
> >> anyone or any company.
> >> 
> >> I think the reason for a split like this would be because of the 
> >> order of magnitude difference in complexity when you have 
> to manage 
> >> 100's of routers in lots of cities with 1000's of dynamic routes 
> >> (NSP) vs 1 (or
> >> 10) router(s) a single static default route to an NSP (SSP|ISP).
> 
> 	First, how is complexity measured (complexity is a term
> 	that gets thrown around a lot and I'm just wondering what
> 	you mean by it)? And is it really true that managing a
> 	backbone with say, 1000s of routers is more "complex"
> 	(for whatever definition) that managing a large broadband
> 	installation that might have 100Ks of users? 
> 	
> >> George do we want/need a category for CSP Content service 
> provider. 
> >> Some ISP's are moving away from providing ANY network 
> connectivity. 
> >> They provide content and host mail/ personal web pages 
> etc... but do 
> >> NOT sell the customer any network access. This model is becoming 
> >> popular. They would not be doing routing for the customers.
> 
> 	Also a good question: Does an ASP/CSP qualify as an ISP,
> 	and if so, what is the definition of "ISP" (or even NSP)
> 	that covers this? I'm not sure. Maybe transport provider
> 	is a cleaner term for SPs providing L1-L3 service.
> 
> >> Finally I think ATM providers and other L1, L1, L3 network 
> providers 
> >> could be covered by the NSP class but am not sure if the 
> model will 
> >> fit.
> 
> 	Transport provider?
> 
> 	Dave
> 		
> 
>