[696] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
switching nodes
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Craig Partridge)
Thu May 16 03:40:25 1991
To: cook@tmn.MIT.EDU
Cc: com-priv@psi.com
From: Craig Partridge <craig@sics.se>
Date: Thu, 16 May 91 09:22:58 +0200
Gordon:
you asked for a clarification of my comment about switching nodes --
unfortunately my recollection of the discussion isn't perfect --
I mentally stored the information that the Internet is far more complex
in terms of routing than the phone network and dropped a lot
of the details.
My recollection was that the discussion was about how many nodes
in the long distance phone networks were used to route traffic
accross the country. These are systems which decide which of
the various trunk lines to send your call over to get from say, NYC to SF,
and can update their routes based on the state of the network.
We didn't discuss POPs and I don't cliam to know how they fit in.
What amazed me was the comments that many countries have only a handful of
these switching nodes (as I recall, the UK had 3 or 4 for the entire
country).
If this is terribly important I'll see about getting a fuller explanation.
Craig
