nanog mailing list archives

Re: interconnection costs


From: Baldur Norddahl <baldur.norddahl () gmail com>
Date: Thu, 24 Dec 2015 03:10:14 +0100

Hi,

The counter example is the Netnod Stockholm IX that allows you to connect
via dark fiber from anywhere within Stockholm. The other large european
exchanges also offer multiple connection options.

"Aren't availability, guaranteed service and remote hands an incentive to
do peering inside a third party colocation? "

That really depends on your situation and who you are. As a residential ISP
our business is not in a DC. If we have any equipment at all there, it
would only be a router. But usually we do not want a router there, we just
want a connection. So in fact we do not want access to the facility at all.

If you are a content provider, you might have servers and what not. Then
sure. Or if you are large IP transit provider, you might want to host a
router, so you can sell to other customers at the DC (if it is a transit
neutral DC).

This is why we now see the rise of remote peering.

Regards,

Baldur



On 24 December 2015 at 01:39, Reza Motamedi <motamedi () cs uoregon edu> wrote:

Aren't availability, guaranteed service and remote hands an incentive to
do peering inside a third party colocation?

I see very large numbers for xconnects for instance in Equnix [
https://blog.equinix.com/2013/08/equinix-cross-connects-hit-110000/] and
it made me believe buying xconnect is still a normal practice.

Best Regards
Reza Motamedi (R.M)
Graduate Research Fellow
Oregon Network Research Group
Computer and Information Science
University of Oregon

On Wed, Dec 23, 2015 at 2:12 PM, Baldur Norddahl <
baldur.norddahl () gmail com> wrote:



On 23 December 2015 at 20:05, Reza Motamedi <motamedi () cs uoregon edu>
wrote:

In Private peering however the AS pays the colo provider for the xconnect
per ASes that it wants to peer with. The cost of transit would be
additional if the peering is in fact a transit and not settlement free.


You are still assuming there is a colo. But perhaps the most common case
is a multihomed company buying transit from two independent service
providers. The customer is at his office and the two service providers will
have their end somewhere in the city, perhaps even terminating their end of
the circuit in a street cabinet. The customer is multihomed and therefore
has his own AS. This is a peering situation with three AS numbers that fits
your description, it is private peering and there is no xconnect. Instead
there is usually a leased line cost, but this cost is often hidden from the
customer. Also the ISP might own the line (physical fiber) and the cost is
not a simple $/month.

But also two ISPs might peer in this way. Residual internet providers
have a ton of points of presences, so why choose a place where there is a
xconnect fee? We can peer anywhere in the city, including at a random
street cabinet. Often the cost of renting a dark fiber somewhere is lower
than a xconnect fee (a sign that datacenter owners are too greedy).

If one party is a content provider I give you that the peering point is
usually at a datacenter somewhere. But still, if the content provider is
big enough to run their own datacenter, we are back at the leased line case
again. Some content providers, even if small, prefer to just run their own
datacenter in the basement of their offices.

Regards,

Baldur





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