[1499] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: value of co-location
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Curtis Villamizar)
Tue Jan 23 10:32:56 1996
To: Dennis Ferguson <dennis@ipsilon.com>
cc: hwb@upeksa.sdsc.edu (Hans-Werner Braun), nanog@merit.edu
Reply-To: curtis@ans.net
In-reply-to: Your message of "Sun, 21 Jan 1996 18:25:01 PST."
<199601220225.SAA02614@mailhost.Ipsilon.COM>
Date: Tue, 23 Jan 1996 10:08:24 -0500
From: Curtis Villamizar <curtis@ans.net>
Dennis,
This is all very amusing.
> We know we want to build a big Internet. Yet somehow the big routers
> one may absolutely require to do this became (a) uninteresting as
> topics of research and development, (b) not well-understood as a necessity
> because of the big-switch-little-router picture, even though this may
> have no relationship to working reality, and (c) even if none of the
> above, the big-router development may still be constrained by the view
> that a big router is useless unless it is equipped with big ATM interfaces,
> even though the latter may turn out to be harder to build than the
> former and we're really getting the cart before the horse. So the end
> result is, no big routers, even though there is apparently little about
> ATM which eliminates the need for big routers if you want a big Internet.
> And all ATM has really managed to deliver so far is obfuscation of the
> issues, putting us in a holding pattern where we're just waiting to see
> what breaks but not doing that much about it.
If ATM is being used in VBR without the V mode, essentially providing
point to point connections between routers at above DS3 rate, then
there is no need for complex reassembly or any form of congestion
control. That may turn out to be the way ATM is used by ISPs. The
other way will be as a LAN technology where the SAR complexity and
congestion issues will come into play.
Curtis
