Re: a question about the economics of peering

[Giles Heron <giles () packetexchange net>]

"David R. Dick" wrote:
> > Today, I was approached by *unnamed-ethernet-extension-company*. They
> > extend ethernets between several US and UK peering exchanges.
> >
> > While speaking with them today, thier engineer and I got into a little bit
> > of a disagreement as to why people peer with each other at public exchange
> > points. My belief is that generally speaking, networks meet at public
> > exchange points (such as MAE-*, LINX, AMSIX, AADS, etc) is to exchange
> > traffic with each other more economically (read: save money).
> >
> > His belief is that people will pay a premium to get to an exchange point,
> > because it's worth paying a premium to have 'less hops' between two
> > networks.
>
> The problem with this idea is that public exchange points need
> to be *avoided* when they get too congested.  People may start
> out trying to minimize number of hops, but I think they eventually
> try to minimize total latency.

but what if the *unnamed-ethernet-extension-company* wasn't providing
access to public exchange points, but was rather enabling uncongested
private peering over its network?  That way latency and hop count are
both mimimised.

BTW, public IXen in Europe don't tend to be congested.  Whether this is
the result of better management, or of lower traffic volumes, than IXen
in the US I'm not sure...

Giles

> > Essentially, he said that paying more for peering that for transit is
> > typical, and to be expected, and most people accept this.
> >
> > Whats the common opinion on this?

-- 
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Giles Heron    Principal Network Architect    PacketExchange Ltd.
ph: +44 7880 506185              "if you build it they will yawn"
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