Re: Info on MAE-EAST

[Stephen Balbach <stephen () clark net>]

On Wed, 15 Jan 1997, Chris Caputo wrote:

> On Wed, 15 Jan 1997, Stephen Balbach wrote:
> > Yeah. If you were to buy a ethernet handoff from UUNET, it would still 
> > cost $2000 for a ethernet cross-connect. I think the idea is, if you come to
> > MAE EAST, use the GigaSwitch or don't come. MFS is such a nice company.
>
> It would be a good idea for MFS to decrease this price for those people
> connected to the GigaSwitch.  No reason to discourage private
> interconnects, especially since they take load off of the GigaSwitch.
> Maybe cable organization is the issue... 

Cable organization is not the issue. MFS is upfront about why they charge 
$2000/month for a cross connect - to encourage use of it's existing services.

MFS is discouraging private interconnects within the MFS colocation. The 
is done so that they can capture revenue by selling more GigaSwitch 
ports. This is being done at the exspense of the MAE's performance. 

Soapbox on:

This would not be the first time a company put it's own best interest 
ahead of it's customers, but given the community trust ISP's place with 
MFS to provide the best possible NAP, I don't think it's a positive mark 
for MFS and raises, again, the validity of having a single major NAP/MAE 
player for each metro area. 

As well brings up the fundamentals of a NAP being run by a telco. There 
are conflicting interests. MAE EAST was conceptually a UUNET creation and 
UUNET thought at the time a single carrier would be the best host for a 
MAE. That descion has, historically, shown to be very 1-sided by design 
or not (probaly not, but who knows what relationship dynamics were at 
play between UUNET/MFS in the early 1990's).

.stb

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