Re: Formal study: How many points networks share

[Scott Marcus <smarcus () genuity com>]

At 22:19 08/26/2000 -0700, Randy Bush wrote:
> > Almost every major network map looks identical.
>
> this is less true for the real maps than those from marketing departments
> and third party dealers in bumph.  yes, providers are in all the same
> places, at least in the states.  but the details of how they get there, how
> they do redundancy, how they handle wet paths, ... differ non-trivially.
>
> but, to your basic question, i am not aware of anyone doing non-fluff
> studies of where everyone inter-connects.  hard to do as all the majors'
> inter-connections are under nda...


Agreed in general, Randy, but I think that the interconnection points are
not the only issue here.  Any point where failure probabilities are not
mutually independent would be a concern to me -- and I agree, I don't know
of anybody doing serious work on this (probably because it is a difficult
problem).

For example, instances where multiple providers happen to ride the same
fiber (and are thus vulnerable to the same backhoe) are interesting,
especially where the fiber is not part of a ring.

Food for thought,
- Scott