Re: Exchange point networks

[hardie () equinix com]

Bill Woodcock writes
>     > One is a "route collector", with which exchanges participants peer in
>     > order to give the exchange operator a view into what is going on
>     > 
>     > Another is a "looking glass" which allows some group (ranging from
>     > participants to the general public) to see layer 3 adjacencies
>
> Hmmm...  These would seem to me to be the same thing, just a difference of
> who's allowed to log in.  I'd call both of these a looking glass.

I guess I see them as two functions which may or may not be connected.
The route collector does the work of peering with the participants.
An exchange operator can interact with a route collector as if it were
a standard router; there is no need for any interface other than the
cli (or other standard interface) for the trouble shooting function.

The looking glass can be tied to the same information source, but its
primary function is to present that data.  In a lot of cases the
interface used for that isn't different from the interface used by the
exchange operator, so the two are strongly tied.  They can be weakly
tied, though, as the looking glass might use a different information
source (say, a participant's router) or may have filters which limit
what data can be presented to the looking glass's user base.

Does that match your sense of the functional difference?

                        regards,
                                Ted Hardie