[2433] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: the Internet Backbone
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Paul Ferguson)
Fri Apr 5 19:44:31 1996
Date: Fri, 05 Apr 1996 19:39:50 -0500
To: avg@postman.ncube.com (Vadim Antonov)
From: Paul Ferguson <pferguso@cisco.com>
Cc: nanog@merit.edu, paul@vix.com
At 03:34 PM 4/5/96 +0800, Vadim Antonov wrote:
>Paul A Vixie <paul@vix.com> wrote:
>
>>Last time this term came up, I opined that there was no "backbone" any more
>>and that 1996's Internet had a "hairball topology." Vadim, among others,
>>disagreed with me but we didn't pursue the topic. Perhaps we should have.
>
>Well, "backbone" is too vague. I rather prefer to think of Internet
>topology as of "tiers". The nodes in upper-levels cast "cones of
>influence" in lower tiers. Nodes from lower tiers belonging to
>different cones of influence do not generally speak to each other,
>and so have to purchase transit from higher tiers.
>
Well, I kind of liked the term 'blobs' [credit to Jerry Scharf]. :-)
- paul
