Re: a question about the economics of peering

[neil () DOMINO ORG (Neil J. McRae)]

> I've set peering policy for at least 2 large ISPs (BTnet
> and Level3 (Europe)). Peering is my field of expertise. I'm on the
> council of the LINX, which is the biggest peering point in Europe. I've
> also got experience of selling internet services in Europe, and to be
> frank, the customers over here have different requirements than over in
> the US. The first thing you get asked is "how good is your peering".
> They then ask you how much private peering you have, despite the fact
> that IXPs in Europe tend to be well run and uncongested. 

yeah don't talk to me about some of the bozo companies I've had 
to talk to about "congestion at the peering points" and how they
can wave their magic wand and make all those problems go away. 

> What I was offering him was a LAN extension service. One of the things
> you can use this for is to peer with other customers. It looks like a
> direct peering (so you keep customers happy) and it gets the bits from A
> to C without passing through (possibly congested and oversubscribed) B.
> Its not an oversubscribed service, so you get effectively private line
> performance. And the costing is distance independent, which makes it
> more like a peering point, in charging terms. 

Sounds like something we looked at a while ago - layer 2 interconnectivity
over IP or MPLS for ISP's - we couldn't make the numbers add up though.

Regards,
Neil.