Re: fight club :) richard bennett vs various nanogers, on paid peering

[Richard A Steenbergen <ras () e-gerbil net>]

On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 02:29:33PM -0800, Richard Bennett wrote:
> * One claim I made in my blog post is that traffic increases on the 
> Internet aren't measured by MINTS very well. MINTS uses data from 
> Meet-me switches, but IX's and colos are pulling x-connects like mad so 
> more and more traffic is passing directly through the x-connects and 
> therefore not being captured by MINTS. Rate of traffic increase is 
> important for regulators as it relates to the cost of running an ISP and 
> the need for traffic shaping. Seems to me that MINTS understates traffic 
> growth, and people are dealing with it by lighting more dark fiber, 
> pulling more fiber, and the x-connects are the tip of the iceberg that 
> says this is going on.

Oh also I forgot to mention that trying to map a direct relationship
between IX traffic growth and total IP traffic growth is completely
bogus. There is a significant modifier you're missing, and it's called
"price". Two years ago the price for an IX port at the large commercial
exchange points in the US (which account for the vast majority of the
traffic, no offense to the small non-comercial exchanges out there) was
between 4-7x higher than the price for the same ports today. The reason
for the price drop had nothing to do with changing economics of
providing the service, but rather it was because of a wide-spread price
war between the two largest IX operators in the US. Such a massive
change in the economics for the IP network operators will obviously
result in major changes to the amount of traffic delivered over IX
fabrics vs private interconnection. Again, something you could have
actually asked operators about rather than making up conclusons in your
head.

-- 
Richard A Steenbergen <ras () e-gerbil net>       http://www.e-gerbil.net/ras
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