Kiggz, the exchange
has no policy on how a member connects to it. Wireless, dial-up, tin-can, LRE
[Long Range Ethernet], it's really up to what the member can afford and sees as
scalable and stable.
The leased lines
offered by UTL is not only for one month, but up to November, and this provides
up to a total of 128Kbps. Between now and November, members will have collected
enough data and exchanged signifcant traffic among each other, to analyse their
requirements for either a leased line, wireless, fibre or any other form of
connection.
Truth be told,
expansion of a member's connectivity to the exchange is limited if you are
paying another company for the bandwidth. It doesn't help either when we have to
start running information gathering utilities such as NetFlow monitor, which is
*very heavy* on bandwidth. But, as a start, if members can take up this offer,
the worst that could happen at the end of November is that they start paying the
$200 or so dollars for the 128Kbps from UTL, or seutp their own access media.
The key thing right now is to get the packets moving. If we have been given that
opportunity, why wait when it's not there and we have teething
problems?
I'd, however, like
to caution that wireless, as we all know and have experienced, has very serious
and concerning issues. Now that the bandwidth is going up [54Mbps], frequencies
are also going up, which means there's a higher rate of signal attenuation and
possibly, loss, due to external factors. At the moment, we are running
BGP in what I'd like to call "friendly-mode." This means, without BGP Route
Flap Dampening turned on. For those of you who are running BGP with your
Internet carriers, dampening occurs when you stop announcing or withdraw your
prefixes to the Internet. It's a form of penalisation from other BGP speaking
peers across the globe, to silence you who keeps getting their BGP processes to
recalculate and reconverge their networks, eating up precious router CPU and
memory time.
At some point, the
exchange will employ this technique, to ensure high quality of service to other
peers and our respective clients. If a member's wireless connection is not
steady, they could "disappear" from the Internet, or have their routes take a
non-optimal, expensive path - over the satellite. The default BGP Dampening
settings; flap once, disappear for one hour or so; flap twice, disappear for a
few more hours or so; flap the third time, disappear for 12 + hours.
So, I urge all
members connecting to the exchange to think very carefully about how they come
in. At some point, the exchange will become as important to us as our satellite
connections, and we all know how heavily we rely on those
ones.
Wilken Afsat is
lucky to be in the same building as the exchange. They have run 100Mbps Ethernet
right down to the basement, where the exchange is located.
Regards,
Mark Tinka - CCNA
Network Engineer, Africa Online Uganda
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Kiggundu Mukasa
Sent: Wednesday, June 25, 2003 8:56 AM
To: LUG
Subject: RE: lug_: IXP again
I heard from one party that the free leased line offer from UTL is only one month and thus they found it hard to justify the recurrent leased line cost to thier boss.
Why can the IXP not allow connections via other means other than leased line? I wonder if AFSAT (which is in the same building as the IXP) has a leased line to the IXP?
It may be easier on the budgets of smaller ISPs to put up their own links (e.g. wireless links) to the IXP and thus have a one time cost. With the new wirless standard that could potentially be a 54 MB/s link from an ISP to the IXP.
My two cents
Kiggs
On Wed, 2003-06-25 at 08:17, Mark Tinka wrote:James, there is one more member setting up as we speak. I will update you and the rest of the community as soon as their circuit goes live. As for server co-lo, I shouldn't see a problem. However, I would recommend a 1U rackmountable server at this time. There isn't enough room to safely install any tower-tops at the exchange. Perhaps you could give more details on your needs. Regards, Mark Tinka - CCNA Network Engineer, Africa Online Uganda -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of wire Sent: Wednesday, June 25, 2003 7:41 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: lug_: IXP again Guys can we hear from Infocom, Bushnet, Spacenet, Dehezi, one2net and others on the possible reasons as to why they are not yet hooked up ? PS: MArk, are we allowed to colocate servers at the IXP as yet ? Wire.
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