>As defined in the industry, a Network Access Point (NAP) is a major
>connection point in the global Internet. It is like a
>Point-of-Presence (POP) but it is high bandwidth. Currently there
>are 5 major NAP in the US, but I need white papers on the
>construction of these major POPs. Hope that helps!
NAP is a historical term for what more frequently is called an
exchange point; there are many more than five in the US and indeed an
increasing number worldwide. There's normally a panel discussion on
"news from the exchanges" at each NANOG meeting
(http://www.nanog.org), and there are exchange working group meetings
at the RIPE meetings for Europe (http://www.ripe.net) Before even
beginning to think about designing an exchange or carrier-grade POP,
be very familiar with the NANOG and RIPE meeting presentations and
with their mailing list minutes.
Cisco has some good references:
ISP Essentials Power Session
<http://www.cisco.com/public/cons/isp/documents/IOSEssentials_Seminar.zip>http://www.cisco.com/public/cons/isp/documents/IOSEssentials_Seminar.zip
BGP Routing Workshop
<http://www.cisco.com/public/cons/workshops/bgp/>http://www.cisco.com/public/cons/workshops/bgp/
I discuss some aspects of exchange points in my BGP tutorial series
at http://www.certificationzone.com. This coming weekend, at NANOG
in Atlanta, I'll be doing an exterior routing tutorial that will
partially discuss exchanges and POPs. Slides should be up by Sunday.
The presentations may be webcast, but I'm not sure. Check the NANOG
site.
The classic exchange point design features a carrier-grade physical
facility, racks for the individual providers' routers, and a common
layer 2 (sometimes layer 3) fabric to interconnect them. In the
original NAPs, the providers often kept the BGP workload down by not
having a direct BGP connection to every other provider there, but to
one or more route servers -- BGP code running on UNIX boxes that do
no forwarding, but build the maps of the exchange point. Today, there
is less emphasis on the route servers for primary BGP, but there is
still peering to them for statistics gathering.
Some exchanges use a distributed switched fabric, so there is not one
physical room. Instead, the participating providers are linked by
ATM.
It's something of an urban legend that the top-level providers do
significant traffic exchange at the exchange points. At that level,
they are far more likely to have private peerings over direct OC-3 or
faster links. Exchange points, however, are useful for medium level
providers in a given urban or geographic area. Indeed, there is an
ever-growing trend to having metropolitan exchange points among
cooperating ISPs in small cities.
The traditional exchange is for ISPs only, but the line between
hosting centers and exchanges is constantly getting more blurry.
Large provider POPs are not necessarily smaller than exchanges, but
simply have a different management and operational model.
I don't want to be negative, but if someone hasn't been playing in
the ISP area for a while, is familiar with the NANOG/RIPE materials,
etc., they aren't remotely ready to design a carrier-grade POP or
exchange by themselves. Cisco consulting engineers, and I'd assume
Juniper as well, can be very helpful when such a project is being
considered.
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Peter Van Oene [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
>Sent: Saturday, February 10, 2001 1:01 PM
>To: Hinton Bandele-NBH281
>Subject: Re: Networking White Papers (NAP and BGP)
>
>
>What exactly do you consider a NAP to be?
>
>*********** REPLY SEPARATOR ***********
>
>On 2/9/2001 at 9:14 AM Hinton Bandele-NBH281 wrote:
>
>>I am setting up a NAP using 3600's and need a site or location for
>>obtaining whitepapers on both NAP's and BGP. I am going to use BGP
>>for router redundancy across multiple ISPs. Where can I find these
>>whitepapers on these two subjects?
>>
>>Thanks!
>>
>>Bandele Hinton
>>Motorola Corporation
> >630-353-8286 (office)
>>877-992-7925 (pager)
>>[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>
>>
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