HI!

[Zvezdelin Vladov]

Hello again from Bulgaria (southeastern Europe).
I don't know if it is appropriate to write these things here, but if it is not,
I beg you pardon me. You need about 5 minutes to read this.
In few words, I'll try to explain two things:

1. Physical Structure of the Connections in Bulgaria
2. Logical Structure of the Internet Connections in Bulgaria.
3. Question - How can I get connected to 6BONE?

1. Physical Structure.
Bulgarian Telecommunication Company (BTC) has the following structure deployed
in the country, with the money from European Union. SDH/PDH as part of the
SONET specification running at 155 Mb/s. The country is devied into 2 main
regions -- eastern optical ring and western optical ring. The rings are from
different vendors -- as far as I know - Alcatel and Northern Telecom. They
are linked in two points thru getting down the 155 Mb/s in Nx2Mb/s links in
two cities in the country. The BTC says that they already use the SDH for
intracity phonecalls. The PDH is in the capital city (Sofia). There are
firms which are deploying xDSL technologies in the capital and other cities.
Internet has never been carried into this structure, because of small market
for Internet services, and for problems from BTC. The BTC until recently could
only give you 2Mb/s as the smallest link capacity throughout the country via
the SDH. Until now, because it bought multyplexers for 2Mb/s=Nx64Kb/s.
Still it is expensive, but if you want to have connection from some city to the
capital, for example, in terms of capacity the only choice you would have
is to do it the hard way -- which means you lease lines, as many as you need,
but the only speed you could get per link, as maximum, is 28.8 Kb/s,
thru analog connection from one city to the capital. Now are available, the
digital links, but many people think that they are expensive. Also, thru the
tactical move, called "try & buy" principle, IBM-Bulgaria has been able to
install ATM testbed in one area of the capital city, though, for good or bad,
officals from BTC say, that "why should we buy ATM, as we already have SDH
deployed". We have offices of the major telecomunication companies --- AT&T,
MCI, Northern Telecom. BTC these days said that it is going to buy 2Mb/s
channel to the Internet from IBM, which is going to strike very hard the local
ISPs which buy the way, sells at least 2,3,4 times the link capacity, and in
this way it is close to impossible to use Internet. To the customer is
presented the an offer of like this -- 60 USD inital tax for connecting and
after this 25 USD per month for 60 hours of time online without limit for the
data transfer, and the ISP have 33.6 Kb/s modems.

2. Logical Structure.
The very first of the ISPs which came out in the market is called
Digital Systems. This is one of the oldest one -- started operations about 1993.
It is connected to EUNET in Amsterdam. It is the one who is maintaining the
DNS database ( well, most of it ). Now, the company (its service) is unusable,
because of overselling its structure. So, speeds like 30/40 bytes per second
and even less are not unlikely to be seen. They don't have any customer service
until recently. Their address is www.digsys.bg, www.eunet.bg. As someone can
notice from its name, they could really dig you in the earth :)--DigSys:).
There are other ISPs, most of the linked to EU structure, but there are few
linked to US, as well, thru satellite dish and Global One and a little firm
which is distributor of Digital Expres Net -- digex.net, called Spectrum PCT
LTD--their web: www.spct.net (spct=spectrum Pct.net).

3. Question
I have connection to resseler of Spectrum PCT. How Can I switch to 6BONE?
You can assume that I have Linux BOX, and I have read most of the RFC dedicated
to IPv6 except IPSEC RFC. So, I can configure my Linux box, to tunnel IPv6
into IPv4 packets. I can talk with Spectrum to make them think on moving into
IPv6 area, if they haven't done this yet.

Thanks for reading, and I am sorry, If I took too much of your time.
Have a nice time.

Zvezdelin Vladov
--- 
/****************************************************************************
 * Zvezdelin Vladov, Assistant, United States Peace Corps - Bulgaria        *
 * Phones: 35932 226546; 35932 272009; fax: 35932 563382; City of Plovdiv   *
 ****************************************************************************/