Re: Extending a MAE connection ...

[Nathan Stratton <nathan () netrail net>]

On Tue, 23 Sep 1997, Alex Rubenstein wrote:

> Here is a question.. a strange one, no less.
>
> Is it feasible to do this:
>  
>   WASHINGTON DC                               NEW YORK CITY
>                       |   B R I D G E  |
> MAE -- 100 Mb/s  -- | Cisco | -DS3- | Cisco | -- FDDI or -- (multiple
> East  FDDI        | 4700M |       | 4700M |    100Base T      peers)
> giga                                           Switch

You may want to go with 7500s, I think the 4700s will have a hard time
when the ds3 starts to fill up.

> Why? here's why.
>
> Several folks in the same building in NYC want to connect to MAE-East.
> But, we all don't want T1's or 10 Meg HLI to MAE-East, but DS3. So, this
> allows us all to connect to the MAE, peer directly with others without an
> intermediary ASN, and we can split the cost of the routers and the DS3. 
>
> I know (at least, I can't think of any reason it can't be done) that is
> can be done. The unanswered questions are:
>
> 1) Will MFS allow us to connect multiple Peers on the same FDDI port (from
> thier webpage, it looks like it, but I am not sure).

They would 12 months ago, when I wanted to do it.

> 2) Is there any technical reason that the above is bad? 

Strange, but I don't think it is "bad". When I needed my Ameritech NAP
connection up ASAP and did not have a space for it. I had Ameritech cross
connect my NAP DS3 to Wolrdcom and extended it to ATL. People thought it
was odd to have 20 ms delay to a NAP connection, but it worked. 

> 3) Because we do it the way shown above, does that make us look less
> attractive (politically) ?

Could be, I think it will depend on how you educate your users. If you get
a lot of people that are defaulting to someone or generally screwing
things up then yes. If you make sure they have a clue, then I don't think
it would be a big deal. 

> Thanks for any input on this. If there is anything I am missing, please
> slap me. Thanks.