Re: US-Asia Peering

[Paul Vixie <vixie () vix com>]

simonl () rd bbc co uk (Simon Lockhart) writes:

> But, given that peering costs are more than just the circuit cost (once
> you include Exchange Point costs, and colo, etc), why would anyone do this
> when you can just buy transit for $100/Mbps or less?

Because peering is better.  There's no way to become DDoS attack-resistant
if you buy transit, since no matter how strong you are, your provider will
ultimately be weaker.  Whether that's because high splay is required to be
strong, or because your provider's security team isn't on a two-minute call
back, or because your provider has a larger set of things to invest their
capital in than your particular path out, doesn't matter.  The fact is, no
cost-effective transit will ever be as good as the best high-splay peering.

> I'm going through this at work at the moment, and am having problems
> justifying staying at the West Coast, having only just justified the
> East Coast, so going to AP (although it's what I'd want to do), is just
> way out of the question...

OPN (other people's networks) are the second most frequent root cause of
connectivity failure.  (Network engineers are the most frequent cause, per
Vijay's excellent talk in Eugene.)  The most reliable access you can get is
when you connect to other networks directly rather than using intermediaries.
Naturally, with a high number of other networks and of places to meet them,
it's only cost effective to peer globally if you have "enough" traffic and
if that traffic's reliability bears directly on your top-line revenue.
-- 
Paul Vixie