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This is not directly related to MICE, but I suspect it will be of interest
to many of you, so I figured I would share it anyway;

Within the last week or two it appears that as part of the
Level3/CenturyLink merger they have interconnected their two IP networks
here in the Twin Cities.  That is AS209(Centurylink) and AS3356(Level3)
appear to have interconnected a pair of routers here in the Twin Cities.
However, the interconnection doesn't seem appear in the BGP routing tables
we are receiving as a customer of Level3. From that perspective the closest
interconnection appears to be in Chicago like it has always been.  However,
based on traceroutes there appears to be more specific routes being
exchanged here in the Twin Cities that are not being announced to us as BGP
customer of Level3.

Further, the interconnection doesn't seem to include local Twin Cites BGP
customer of Centurylink or any Centurylink outstate Minnesota customers at
all, as those destinations seem to route through the Chicago still. So this
primarily provides a shortcut from Level3 Twin Cities customers
to Centurylink's Twin Cities broadband customers and vice vesra.  This has
reduced our latency to Twin Cities Centurylink broadband customers; for
fiber customers from ~20ms to ~5ms or less, and DSL customers from ~40ms to
~25ms, most of remaining latency being from DSL interleaving.

So, if you are a BGP customer of Level3 here in the Twin Cites at least,
you may want to ensure that you are routing to Centurylink through Level3,
to take advantage of this shortcut.

Thanks.

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David Farmer               Email:[log in to unmask]
Networking & Telecommunication Services
Office of Information Technology
University of Minnesota
2218 University Ave SE        Phone: 612-626-0815
Minneapolis, MN 55414-3029   Cell: 612-812-9952
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