[34996] in North American Network Operators' Group
History of private peering and exchanges?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Howard C. Berkowitz)
Fri Feb 23 08:42:17 2001
Mime-Version: 1.0
Message-Id: <p05001911b6bc16c992d2@[63.216.127.100]>
Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 08:39:36 -0500
To: nanog@merit.org
From: "Howard C. Berkowitz" <hcb@clark.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed"
Errors-To: owner-nanog-outgoing@merit.edu
Between fading memories and NDA's, it can be hard to track how things
happened...but I'm trying to put together some timelines about
interprovider peering both through private peering (i.e., at what
point it became economic to meet other than through ARPANET/NSFNET)
and at exchanges.
In the beginning, of course, there was the ARPANET.
Then there was the NSFNET. The NAPs were the first recognizable
exchange points, with AUPs. NAPs were linked by VBNS.
CIX came later, without the AUP restrictions of NSFNET. My
impression is that bandwidth into it, at first, was quite limited.
At some point, there started to be a business case for large
providers to interconnect with bilateral private links as well as at
exchanges. When did such links first get used for commercial
traffic? In the beginning, were they short-haul connections between
cages in exchanges, or WAN links between major provider hubs? I'm
referring here only to interprovider links, not to transit customers.
Also in the timeline was the advent of true "local" or "metro"
exchanges. Going through the archives, the first I see was Tucson.
Was that indeed the first cooperative exchange intended to reduce
backhaul?
