Re: Sprint VS. Qwest

["Stephen J. Wilcox" <steve () telecomplete co uk>]

On Fri, 18 Oct 2002, dgold wrote:

> What possible reason would the average small transit buyer have for
> knowing the details of a carrier's peering arrangements - especially
> carriers like Sprint and Qwest?

Are you suggesting that small providers care less about who they purchase their
Internet connectivity from? Hmm. 

> Both Sprint and Qwest are, most would agree, transit-free, "tier 1"
> networks. They interconnect with all other similarly large networks. How
> much more do you want? The size of their interconnections to 701? I'm not
> sure how that is useful.

Depends what you're looking at. If you believe that redundancy and reliability
are linked to diversity then its very relevant for you to have feel for the
general policies and infrastructure but no, not individual peering sessions.

> The only really useful information about peering from carriers of this
> size might be packet loss statistics across private peering connections.

Well no, theres more useful info.. these details only show the network operating
normally. In the event of a Sep 11th type disruption of a major Internet wide
routing issue this might be the difference between slight disruption and major
disruption.

Steve

> That is an actual performance metric, and could tend to seperate some
> providers from others, and reward those who keep their peering connections
> properly sized. Perhaps this is what you mean by "better" peering?
> Locations and sizes won't help you at all, if this is what you are looking
> for.
>
> I suppose the question is, what is your goal? If you are looking for
> transit, there are numerous criteria -
>
> - price
> - customer service
> - clueful engineer accessability
> - network stability
> - network "reach" - i.e. do they have a POP where you want to
> interconnect?
> - Packetloss and latency metrics
> - Special features - rich community set, multicast, etc
>
>
> - Dan
>
>
>
> On Thu, 17 Oct 2002, Stephen J. Wilcox wrote:
>
> > Well Sprints non-peering policy is second to none if that helps with C&W a close
> > second..... :)
> >
> > Steve
> >
> > On Wed, 16 Oct 2002, Christopher K. Neitzert wrote:
> >
> > > List,
> > >
> > > Neither Sprint nor Qwest are serious about earning my business and are not
> > > providing me with their network peering details.  I was hoping that the
> > > list might have the collective resources to help me determine who has
> > > better peering.
> > >
> > > thanks
> > >
> > > chirstopher