Re: /27 the new /24

["Joe Abley" <jabley () hopcount ca>]

On 12 Oct 2015, at 11:23, Todd Underwood wrote:

> it's also not entirely obvious what the point of having local IXes
> that serve these kinds of collections of people.

I think that's true. But I don't think it's always the case this means 
there is no point.

When Citylink (incubated by the City Council) started stringing fibre 
around central Wellington, New Zealand and building fast ethernet access 
into buildings in the mid-90s it wasn't obvious what benefit that would 
give anybody at a time when most of the country was hanging off a 
collection of E1 half-circuit leases to the west-coast US. But it led to 
a cottage industry in teleworking, off-site data storage, digital print 
shops and video conferencing in the city that would not have been 
possible otherwise.

What Citylink built was part access network, part exchange, but to their 
credit they didn't spend too much time worrying about what to call what 
they were building: they just built it.

Part of keeping the network stupid is giving people at the edge room to 
innovate. Sometimes when you build it, they come.


Joe