Re: European backbones in name only?

[philip bridge <]

Consider the following case: two providers have pan-european backbones, but also have a national network with its own AS in each european country. Usually this architecture has arisen because the provider has grown through aquisition of national ISPs. The national backbones may only peer at the 3-4 major european peering points. That means both providers have 'local' AS in many countries where there is no 'major' peering point. The customers of each providers in such cases are not very understanding when the traffic between them takes an international route. It therefore makes sense to have a direct peering. So in this case, the providers could have both international peerings between their backbones and national peerings between their 'national' ASes. If both providers have this architecture, there should be no argument.

The problems come when (as usual) one provider has a 'monolithic' pan-european, single-AS architecture and another has the kind of 'decentralised' architecture described above. Or when both providers are decentralised, but have national networks that are of varying sizes in each country. I work for a company with a 'decentralised' architecture and peering policy. I have had direct experience of a situation where a major global provider, also with a decentralised European architecture (due to aquisitions) wanted to peer with us in countries where we are strong and he is weak, but refused in countries where the converse was the case.

Summarising, I think there are valid reasons for this sort of architecture, and I would contend that, from the customers perspective, it can lead to a performance optimisation. But it should probably be done in parallel with optimisation at the international backbone level.

As with many things in life, there are no black/white right/wrong ways to do things. Life would be much more boring if that were the case!

Phil


At 13:20 17.07.00 -0400, dgreenfi@localhost wrote:
>Anybody else seeing this...I've heard that  the so called European Internet
>backbones are, well, just that - "so called." When you get down to it and start
>talking peering, the European Internet backbone providers are often looking to
>locate their peers on local or national ASes not the major routes cutting down
>on performance, etc. etc. View on both sides of the house are welcome.
>Information is for an upcoming story. As always, comments can be kept
>off-the-record.
>
>Thanks,
>David Greenfield
>International Technology Editor
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______________________________________________________________
Philip Bridge	                                www.bridgenet.ch
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It might look like I'm doing nothing, but at the cellular 
level I'm really quite busy...