Re: Peering - Benefits?

["vijay gill" <vgill () vijaygill com>]

On Thu, Oct 30, 2008 at 9:41 PM, Patrick W. Gilmore <patrick () ianai net> wrote:
> On Oct 30, 2008, at 10:19 PM, vijay gill wrote:
>
> > This is probably going to be a somewhat unpopular opinion, mostly
> > because people cannot figure out their COGS. If you can get transit
> > for cheaper than your COGS, you are better off buying transit and not
> > peering.  There are some small arguments to be made for latency and
> > 'cheap/free' peering if you are already buying transit at an exchange
> > and your port/xconn fee is cheaper than your capital/opex for the
> > amount of traffic you peer off.
>
> One of us is confused.

precisely.

> Transit is _part_ of COGS, at least for most of the group reading this list.
>  Finding transit "cheaper than your COGS" just means cheaper than you get it
> now.  And that in no way way means you should dump peering.  What if peering
> is cheaper than transit?

Cost of transport, opex and capital to build out to a peering point,
ports for interconnect, vs the expected money saved by peering away
sufficient traffic is the analysis that will inform your strategy.
This is why I said if you are already at a place where you are buying
transit, it probably worth it to peer with the folks locally.

The point is if you are building out specifically to peer, the effort
is not worth it if you are not operating at scale, and if you are
operating at scale, you are not going to ask nanog about peering.

/vijay


> The part where we do agree is that most people cannot figure out their COGS.
>  And you might even convince me that "you don't know what peering really
> costs you" is a valid reason to shy away from it.  But that is not what you
> said.
>
>
> Assuming you can figure your actual costs, and peering is at least break
> even with transit, I would suggest you peer.  If peering is not cheaper,
> then I would suggest not doing it.  (Obviously a generalization - there are
> corner cases which go against the rule.)  And if you cannot figure your
> actual costs, it is much safer to stick with the more simple solution - i.e.
> transit.
>
> > To be completely realistic, at current transit pricing, you are almost
> > always better off just buying transit from two upstreams and calling
> > it done, especially if you are posting to nanog asking about peering.
>
> That is a pretty broad statement.
>
> Not that I think you are wrong....  I honestly am not sure at this point.
>  (Mostly 'cause I'm not sure who would e-mail NANOG asking about it. :-)
>
> --
> TTFN,
> patrick
>
>
>
> > On Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 12:17 PM, Paul Stewart
> > <pstewart () nexicomgroup net> wrote:
> > > Hi there...
> > >
> > > I'm in a meeting next week to discuss settlement-free peering etc.....
> > > always an interesting time.  A push is on (by myself) to get into other
> > > physical locations and participate on the peering exchanges.
> > >
> > > Besides costs, what other factors are benefits to peering?
> > >
> > > I can think of some but looking to develop a concrete list of appealing
> > > reasons etc. such as:
> > >
> > > -control over routing between networks
> > > -security aspect (being able to filter/verify routes to some degree)
> > > -latency/performance
> > >
> > >
> > > Just looking for other positive ideas etc...;)
> > >
> > > Cheers!
> > >
> > > Paul
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
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