Blog Archives for November, 2006

Google is building a Fiber Backbone in order to take over the world (we're not sure how that works, but you should be worried). Google is digitizing libraries violating copyright! Google is spying on your email! Your email, man! Your private email! Google is watching every click you make! Google is in league with China! Google is building a free, ad-powered wireless network to spy on good people everywhere! Good God! Look Out Geek: Google Power Gonna Get Yer Mama! [1]

This is the post promised by a previous entry about Google and AT&T peering. It seems that no matter what Google does, they catch endless raftloads of criticism from the masses (and pundits) about the nature of each project and its nefarious implications. Of course, there's nothing wrong with individuals being concerned about the way in which multi-billion-dollar corporations treat them. It's healthy and part of a competitive, free society. But the knee-jerk reactions to Google's every move stray beyond the normal, rational vigilance. So whence the Googanoia? Where does the fear come from?

Continue reading "Googanoia: Why Everyone Is So Scared of Google" »

Today, for the first time, the Amsterdam Internet Exchange surpassed 200 Gigabits per second across its switch fabric. AMS-IX was already the biggest public Internet exchange on the planet, but this is impressive growth.

While AMS-IX hits 200 Gb/s on a single Internet Exchange in a single city, Tier 1 Research pointed out a few weeks ago that it was a big deal that Equinix recently hit an aggregate of 100Gb/s across all of their exchanges—including Ashburn, San Jose, Chicago, Dallas, Singapore and so on. So why is AMS-IX so much bigger than everyone else?

Continue reading "AMS-IX hits 200 Gigabits per second " »

Many of the recent great tales of peering, depeering and and repeering involve Cogent (AS174) eventually. This one starts there. Cogent and Sprint (AS1239) established a direct adjacency this week. You may be able to see the little "1239" next to directly connected to the "174" in the picture off to the side. This is big news for a number of reasons, among them:

• Both are big networks
• Sprint is tremendously exclusive in its peering and would almost certainly not offer Settlement Free Interconnection to a network of Cogent's ilk.
• Cogent is a tremendously cheap (let's say "cost conscious") network that would never pay a cent more than they had to for anything

What remains are a whole lot of questions, some of which we have ready answers for and others of which require moles and informants inside the relevant networks. Among the questions are: What kind of peering is it? For what prefixes? In what geographies? Is anyone paying anyone else? Who lost the traffic? Why did Sprint and Cogent do this?

Continue reading "Sprint and Cogent Peer" »