[36330] in North American Network Operators' Group
RE: Faster 'Net growth rate raises fears about routers
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Sean Donelan)
Tue Apr 3 08:27:59 2001
Date: 3 Apr 2001 05:25:41 -0700
Message-ID: <20010403122541.19126.cpmta@c004.sfo.cp.net>
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To: nanog@merit.edu
From: Sean Donelan <sean@donelan.com>
Errors-To: owner-nanog-outgoing@merit.edu
On Mon, 02 April 2001, Roeland Meyer wrote:
> From the article:
> <quote>
> "Half of the companies that are multihomed should have gotten better service
> from their providers," says Patrik Faltstrom, a Cisco engineer and co-chair
> of the IETF's Applications Area. "ISPs haven't done a good enough job
> explaining to their customers that they don't need to multihome."
> </quote>
Why would a rational customer pay for a second connection (usually more
than doubling their cost) if a single connection was satisfactory? Although
providers try to vertically integrate their operations, time and time again,
vertical integration tends to increase the risk for the customer.
Mid-level providers serve an important function in the Internet hierarchy.
Multi-homing works well with mid-level providers aggregating local routes,
and managing redudancy between long-haul providers. If you don't use a
mid-level provider, to achieve the same reliability you end up needing to
be your own mid-level provider.
Why can't a large provider operate their network as a set of mid-level
networks, and connections to multiple long-haul networks. They could.
