Re: IXP hardware

[Brian Candler <B.Candler at pobox.com>]

On Fri, Mar 08, 2002 at 12:38:54AM +0100, Americo F. Muchanga wrote:
>    some isps will be
>    able to plug directly to the switch as they will have an ethernet
>    link, could those have their router in their premises, or you think it
>    should be better to have the router located in the ix premises?

If several ISPs already share the same building, then that's the obvious
place to put the IXP. If the building is commercially run, they may even
host the IXP for free, as its presence is likely to attract other ISPs.

Adjacent buildings can be linked using multimode fibre relatively cheaply.

> > how can I connect those ISP's over a leased line to the switch at the IXP?
> usually the isps each has their own router next to the l2 switch, and
> each is responsible to bring connectivity to that router.  

In some cases it might be an option to layer-2 bridge directly to the IXP. A
number of vendors sell boxes which will bridge ethernet over copper over a
few km - e.g. http://www6.adc.com/ecom/hier?NODE=OND29308
If you investigate something like this, make sure its MAC address table is
big enough to be able to learn all the remote IXP participants (some DSL kit
has a maximum capacity of only 16 MAC addresses for example). Anyway this
doesn't change the basic IXP model, since it's still the ISP's
responsibility to buy and manage the kit for both ends of their line.

Bridging ethernet over a conventional synchronous leased line isn't worth
it; it will be cheaper and simpler to put a router at each end.

B.

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