nanog mailing list archives
Re: Coop Peering Fabric??
From: Andy Davidson <andy () nosignal org>
Date: Tue, 12 Aug 2008 20:13:32 +0100
On 12 Aug 2008, at 04:15, Deepak Jain wrote:
A "coop", best-effort switch fabric colo'd at a few sites would allow participants to peer off traffic at a price of the order of a single cross-connect (~$500/month per 10G port is possible, maybe less)
Most of the Internet Exchanges in Europe that quickly spring to mind as successful, are run as co-operative entities, similar to what you describe.
Specifically, most (all?) of the larger ones over here run as independent bodies that are owned mutually -- that is to say, owned by all of the participators at the exchange. The model is popular, and many hundreds of GB/s of traffic is exchanged on switches run by mutual organisations in Europe.
This works really well because it means there is no commercial/profit motivation to operate significantly above cost-recovery levels. Here, costs mean the CapEx, OpEx, and any community/member sanctioned projects.
Where it breaks is when we have to tell a network with lots of traffic that in order to participate at the exchange, they have to become a member (part owner) of the organisation. Due to organisational or even regulatory issues, it may not be legal to sell services (exchange ports) to non members/owners. This doesn't frighten the engineer asking for a connection, but it causes some concern at C*O level ("err, I might have to declare this to shareholders/regulators...")
I think my message to you would be that if you have a bunch of colleagues at other organisations near you that want to start peering ... configure a switch, peer, and take it from there as you grow ! I hope your new exchange is successful !
Best wishes Andy Davidson Declared hat - www.lonap.net (London, UK based mutual IX)
Current thread:
- Re: Coop Peering Fabric??, (continued)
- Re: Coop Peering Fabric?? Paul Wall (Aug 12)
- Re: Coop Peering Fabric?? Deepak Jain (Aug 12)
- Re: Coop Peering Fabric?? Paul Wall (Aug 12)
- Re: Coop Peering Fabric?? Deepak Jain (Aug 12)
- Re: Coop Peering Fabric?? Matt Liotta (Aug 12)
- Re: Coop Peering Fabric?? Deepak Jain (Aug 12)
- Re: Coop Peering Fabric?? Matt Liotta (Aug 12)
- RE: Coop Peering Fabric?? John R Savageau (Aug 12)
- Re: Coop Peering Fabric?? Patrick W. Gilmore (Aug 12)