Re: Cogent/Level 3 depeering

[Daniel Golding <dgolding () burtongroup com>]

On 10/6/05 10:30 AM, "Randy Bush" <randy () psg com> wrote:

> > > Is being a tier-1 now a good or bad sales argument when
> > > selling internet access ?
> > Its a great sales argument. That's why everyone claims to be
> > one. It just sounds SO good. And its not like the Peering
> > Police are going to enforce it.  What does it mean in real
> > life? Nothing. Nada. An organization's SFI status is a
> > particularly poor criteria for choosing a transit
> > provider. There are so many better factors to use - support,
> > packet loss, price, latency, availability, provisioning speed
> > - you name it, its a better criteria than SFI status.
>
> packet loss and latency to *where*?  before replying, consider
> that most of a leaf's traffic is either to/from another leaf of
> a tier-1 to which they're (possibly indirectly) downstream, or
> to/from the tree of a tier-1 which peers with the tier-1 to
> which they're attached.

Consider this: A Tier 1 (SFI network) with congested peering links vs a
non-SFI network with wide open transit pipes. I know I'd pick the latter.

Latency when all inter-network links are uncongested is going to be pretty
low in any case. 

> if tier-n, where n > 1, is buying transit from tier-1s, which
> they have to do, then the price game seems to be pretty
> determined unless one likes to run at a loss or is cross-
> subsidizing from some other product line.
>
> all your bases are belong to us. :-)
>
> randy

Dan