Hey National Net guy,
Am I to assume that every one of your sixteen strands of fiber between "pop1" and "pop2" is diversely routed? If so, why don't you toss up a physical plant map on
www.national-net.com illustrating your fibre routes? Surely that would buy you some excellent bragging rights.
While there's nothing wrong with connecting your network to transit or peering served out of another facility, there is everything wrong with relying on such bandwidth EXCLUSIVELY. And what's up with the "five" ISP's you connect to, why have you no response for that point?
When designing a network hierarchy, a cardinal rule one should follow is to plan for as many layers (eg, border, edge, etc) legitimately needed to cope with scaling issues and the type of services one offers, and no more. The "aggregation" and "gig" devices, as depicted on the diagram on your web page, buy you nothing. They're just extra devices, which can break, and take down your network. The argument that others are doing it too doesn't scale particularly well either, especially when you realize that the other services providers and hosting companies that implemented similar infrastructures (Globix, Exodus/Cable and Wireless, Verio), are now cash-starved and not doing too well.