[AusNOG] NBN Co Layer 2 vs. Layer 3 Services

[Paul Brooks]

I've had several people bend my ear as to why they think NBNCo should be 
layer 3/IP, coming mainly from ATUG and end-user land.
Most of it was from several months ago before CA and NBNCo put out the 
consultation papers outlining why we thought Layer 2 was the way to go.

I haven't heard any particularly persuasive arguments, or a clear 
articulation of the problem that would be solved by NBNCo being 'Layer 
3', and I would have hoped that the consultation papers would explain 
why NBNCo doing Layer 2 didn't mean the Layer 3 services from RSPs would 
be limited.

For fairness, one of the arguments was around traffic efficiency - that 
in a Layer-2 model, traffic from (say) a factory connected to one RSP 
that wanted to get to (say) a business partner located physically right 
next door that was connected to a different RSP would not follow an 
optimal path across the street, but will be forced to travel all the way 
out to an interconnect point and through RSP1, then be handed over to 
RSP2, then have to travel all the way back to the recipient - possibly 
hundreds of kilometres.  The guys advocating for Layer3 seem to assume 
that NBNCo's routers would allow the traffic to cut-through and stay 
entirely local, and would not have to hit either of the RSPs core 
networks at all. I remain unconvinced.

I note Phil Dobbie has just released a Twisted Wire episode looking at 
Layer 3, that I haven't listened to yet - Skeeve, is the Twisted Wire 
podcast that led to your question?

P.


On 22/04/2010 9:22 AM, McDonald Richards wrote:
>
> I've been to a couple of their workshops now and from what I can tell, 
> NBN Co have no intention of providing a layer 3 service. Where are the 
> other voices and are they people with clue or just opinion pieces from 
> industry commentators?
>
> Macca
>
> *From:* ausnog-bounces at lists.ausnog.net 
> [mailto:ausnog-bounces at lists.ausnog.net] *On Behalf Of *Skeeve Stevens
> *Sent:* Thursday, 22 April 2010 9:03 AM
> *To:* ausnog at ausnog.net
> *Subject:* [AusNOG] NBN Co Layer 2 vs. Layer 3 Services
>
> Hey all,
>
> Just a quick question.
>
> At the moment there is a lot of talk of NBN and whether they are going 
> to deliver Layer 2 or Layer 3 services.
>
> I am a little confused about what is meant by that.  In that as ISP's, 
> I would assume that we would only want Layer 2 services from them? 
> Just in kind of a DSL Wholesale/Ethernet wholesale/etc situation that 
> we already have.
>
> Most of our ISP customers would be happy if the NBN operated just like 
> the current wholesale models out there at the moment.  Little ISP 
> calls his aggregator and says he wants a NBN VLAN to this address 
> which they get from NBNCo (if directly if you are big enough and can 
> afford to interconnect yourself), which is turned on and presented at 
> an aggregation port... very much like taking wholesale ethernet from 
> Pipe, Nextgen, Telstra and others today.
>
> This makes sense to me.
>
> But there is a bunch of voices saying they want the NBN Co to do Layer 
> 3... and I am not quite sure what is meant by that?  Users buy 
> bandwidth off the NBN Co? Turning them into a retail ISP?
>
> If this seems like a stupid question, I am sorry about that... but 
> there are some voices who have access to presenting their views and 
> are doing so about NBN should be doing Layer 3... and I am trying to 
> find some understanding about what is actually being suggested.
>
> ...Skeeve
>
> --
>
> Skeeve Stevens, CEO/Technical Director
>
> eintellego Pty Ltd - The Networking Specialists
>
> skeeve at eintellego.net / www.eintellego.net
>
> Phone: 1300 753 383, Fax: (+612) 8572 9954
>
> Cell +61 (0)414 753 383 / skype://skeeve
>
> www.linkedin.com/in/skeeve ; facebook.com/eintellego
>
> --
>
> NOC, NOC, who's there?
>
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-- 
Paul Brooks               |         Mob +61 414 366 605
Layer 10 Advisory         |         Ph  +61 2 9402 7355
-------------------------------------------------------
Layer 10 - telecommunications strategy&  network design

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