ABSTRACT

As the NSFNET backbone service migrates into a commercial environment, so will access to the only set of publicly available statistics for a large national U.S. backbone. The tran- sition to the new NSFNET program, with com- mercially operated services providing both regional service as well as cross-service provider switching points, or Network Access Points (NAPS), will render statistics collection a much more difficult endeavor. In this paper we discuss issues and complexities of statistics collection at recently de- ployed global network access points such as the U.S. federal NAPS.