Re: Info on MAE-EAST

[sob () academ com (Stan Barber)]

Brett writes:
> MAE-Houston, a small NAP in the scheme of things, but it makes for a good 
> example so we'll use it. $2000/month to get your foot in the door, then
> another large chunk of cash to connect to the Gigaswitch which all things
> considered, isn't really needed. Rather than waste their money on equipment
> that all in all just doesn't need to be there, why not make it more economic
> for local players to get involved and cross connect to eachother. In the end
> you not only save money by not bringing in useless hardware but you garner
> more customers by lessening the price of the private interconnect. 

Perhaps the costs have changed and noone has told me, but the $2000/month
for MAE-HOUSTON includes a 10Mb/sec local loop if you are on the MFS network 
in Houston (more than 140 buildings, I believe). As far as I know, most of the
participants (and I note that NOL is not one of them) are not hooked to 
anything faster than a 10Mb/sec connection and none of them are co-locating
at the MAE just for the purpose of connecting to it.

So, I am not sure it makes a good example unless you consider the amount
of traffic exchanged at MAE-HOUSTON. I believe that some of the participants
would like either to get more traffic through the MAE or to have slower
connections more in keeping with the amount of traffic they are actually
exchanging. The peak usage is not much above 5Mb/sec during the last week.
MFS had offered lower speed connections initially and then widthdrew that
offering around the time the MAE came on-line. I thought that was a mistake,
but it was and is MFS's business to lose.
-- 
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