Re: "vpn exchange point"

[Christopher Morrow <morrowc.lists () gmail com>]

On Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 3:46 PM, Michael Dillon
<wavetossed () googlemail com> wrote:
> > Do you know of any "vpn exchange point" implementations please? -I mean something like IXP but for mpls vpns
> >
> > Let's say I'm an ISP that bought or merged with many small ISPs each with it's own AS# and would like to start 
> > offering mpls vpn services end to end
>
> In the MPLS world, this type of interconnect is called NNI (Network to
> Network Interconnect)

hey look frame-relay! (joking, sorta, not really)

In almost all cases this is still done via the A version (or 1 version
of 4) mpls interconnect types where each customer VPN is broken down
to native-IP links (vlans most often I believe, sometimes frame dlcis!
:)) and the contracted cos/qos setup is replicated on the adjacent
provider's interface as well... as you (michael) pointed out though,
it's pretty much only done for 'i dont want to build in XXX' places.

Additionally, from my (admittedly limited involvement) understanding
these sorts of connections are notoriously problematic, painful and
ultimately expensive for the provider(s) in question :( boo.

> and it needs to take into account things like COS mappings. I don't
> know of anyone doing this
> as an exchange, But I imagine that if you had a router with a private
> ASN, you could always
> do NNI with a different ASN on each port and therefore, achieve
> something analogous to an
> IXP.

the real question is why? what's the business driver? what's the
support model? is it truly worthwhile?

-chris