RE: Where are ATM NAPs going?

[Jay Ford <jay-ford () uiowa edu>]

I wrote:
> > From a research university perspective, the AADS NAP is a cool thing.  It
> > lets me do peering & various types of transit on a single circuit, & the
> > availability of the route servers is nice.  The full mesh of PVCs removes
> > most of the layer 1-2 pain involved with firing up new interactions.  The
> > circuit to get there isn't cheap, but it seems worth it based on my
> > experience.

On Mon, 18 Dec 2000, Christian Kuhtz wrote:
> Do you have any expectations with regards to service provided between various
> peers and the fact that some peers may (depending on your ATM QoS) step onto
> other peering partners?

The short answer is "no".  ;^)

The longer answer is that I'm aware of the potential chaos & nondeterminism
associated with a multi-user contention-based UBR service such as that
offered by the AADS NAP.  It's certainly an issue, but it doesn't disqualify
it from being a useful piece of a connectivity puzzle provided that one
utilizes it with eyes open about its characteristics.

________________________________________________________________________
Jay Ford, Network Engineering Group, Information Technology Services
University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA 52242
email: jay-ford () uiowa edu, phone: 319-335-5555, fax: 319-335-5505