One way I know it's done is the following... |INTERNATIONAL| | |TRAFFIC SHAPER| | |NATIONAL| - |NATIONAL| DISCLAIMER: Don't know if the above picture will come out in all email clients. :) National traffic goes via the national router, when an international request or connection is made, it goes via the ISP's traffic shaper to allocate you with the amount of international bandwidth you have paid for, in doing so it keeps a record of your traffic. Think of the traffic shaper being a border router, traffic to this router will only be received if the national routers don't see it as being national. I've never been the best at explaining these things, but hope it helps. Barry -----Original Message----- From: Cleave Pokotea [mailto:cleave.pokotea(a)natlib.govt.nz] Sent: Monday, 26 January 2004 12:58 p.m. To: nznog(a)list.waikato.ac.nz Subject: [nznog] Determining International vs Local Hello, Just looking for some clarification from the group regarding International versus Local traffic identification (sorry for the uneducated queries): Traditionally circuit switched voice calls are carried via a dedicated end-to-end circuit (or virtual circuit) that the switching system sets up for the purpose of each call. The originating carrier bills the customer originating the call (the collection charge) and is billed by the terminating carrie for completing the call (the accounting rate). Therefore calls are easily distinguished between point A (local) and point B (international). With IP traffic(packet switched) an Internet message is broken down into many packets that may be individually routed over many different networks to arrive at the endpoint where they are reassembled into their original, coherent message. Individual messages therefore do not occupy a defined circuit for a defined time. So, how is International traffic differentiated from local traffic in NZ? How do ISP's deterine what traffic has originate locally? I am assuming there are two main methods of Inter-connection used in NZ; 1. Sats, 2. Southern Cross (?) cable. Is traffic classified (?) at the main entry points or are ISP's classifiying traffic via IP ranges (The dotted quad ranges seem's a rather ad-hoc method) and / or other methods? thanks, C. Resource Development Analyst Digital Initiatives Unit Te Puna Mataurange o Aotearoa National Library of New Zealand Wellington _______________________________________________ NZNOG mailing list NZNOG(a)list.waikato.ac.nz http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/nznog