RE: Backbone IP network Economics - peering and transit

["Michel Py" <michel () arneill-py sacramento ca us>]

> Deepak Jain wrote:
> But that structure doesn't vary vastly if you'd traffic out
> that gig via transit vs direct connect. It does vary (and
> add lots of infrastructure) if you don't aggregate your
> traffic at IXes and instead use loops to bring transit to
> you instead of going to it. (say a few 100Mb/s or OC3s in
> a few places instead of a GigE at an IX).

Indeed.

> Perhaps we should (for technical reasons) describe
> peering as "direct connecting".

This makes a lot of sense to me (although I would suggest a different
name later). Since the beginning I have been trying to make the point
that "direct connecting" was typically a no-brainer in terms of money.
Peering when you have to buy the local loop is not such a slam dunk.


> Business reasons aside, technically the difference is
> that with transit you are expecting access via indirect
> connections to networks.

I'm not so sure about this. There are lots of people that buy transit
and are directly connected to their provider in an IX for example.

> With peering you expect direct connections into a network.

If "direct connecting" != peering then definitely.

Maybe we need to say differentiate between:
- Connected transit
- Remote transit
- Connected peering
- Remote peering

And agree that, by default,
transit ~= remote transit
peering ~= direct peering

Michel.