Re: Sprint peering policy

[Clayton Fiske <clay () bloomcounty org>]

On Mon, Jul 01, 2002 at 01:36:00PM -0400, alex () yuriev com wrote:
> > Here's a fun exercise:  Drop your 5 busiest peers, and see if your
> > operating costs a) increase, b) decrease, or c) remain the same.
>
> If your full cost of peering with UUNET (including things such as
> depreciation) comes to $400 per mbit/sec and via a promisig local ISP you
> can get transit to UUNET at $200 per mbit/sec, your costs will decrease.
> Just because the IP is free with peering does not mean that it costs $0 to
> peer.

Nor does it cost $0 on top of that $200 to buy transit. This may hold
true to some degree for a small-ish network, but probably not for a
larger one. Even factoring in depreciation, line cards, etc, I would
imagine you won't find OC3 transit in 4 cities from any ISP to be as
cheap as OC3 peering in 4 cities, for example. Add to that the chance
that, as a larger network, you'll probably be getting your pipes at
volume discounts.

I never meant to imply that peering is 0-cost. I just don't agree with
the blanket statement that peering (or lack thereof) has no financial
impact.

-c