single homed public-peer bandwidth ... pricing survey ?

Tue Mar 6 23:36:13 UTC 2007

>
> Hello,
>
> I am currently hosted in a small, independent
> datacenter that has 4 or 5 public peers (L3, Sprint,
> UUnet, AT&T and   ... ?)

They are most likely giving you a single feed to their core which has  
4-5 upstream connections to transit providers.  Not peers really,  Im  
sure they are paying for their transit.

> They are a very nice facility, very technical and
> professional, and have real people on-site 24 hours
> per day ... remote hands, etc.  All very high end and
> well managed.

I'm sure some of the $$ you pay for bandwidth pays for their amazing  
support structure.
>
> But, I am charged between $150 and $180 per megabit/s
> for non-redundant, single-homed bandwidth (not sure
> which provider they put it on) and even if I commit to
> 20 or 30 megabits/s it still only drops down to $100 -
> $120 per megabit/s.
>
> So naturally, I am very interested when I see HE.NET
> offering bandwidth for $20/mb/s, and it looks like
> Level3 is selling for $30/mb/s...
>
> Are there two classes of bandwidth in the world ?  Is
> it reasonable and expected that single homed public
> peered bandwidth is, circa Jan 2007, going for above
> $100/mb/s while private peered bandwidth like L3 and
> HE.NET is $30 and below ?
>
> Or am I just getting ripped off ?

Probably not

> Where can I go to read and learn more about the
> advantages and disadvantages (from a networking
> standpoint) of switching from an independent, public
> peered datacenter to, say, L3 or HE.NET ?

Search for the problems Cogent & Level(3) had off and on over the  
past couple years and decide for yourself if you want to have a  
single connection to a 'tier 1' provider.  Personally I like to have  
 >1 connections to a 'tier 1' provider.

Keep in mind that in order to be redundant your provider needs to buy  
your bandwidth twice from their upstream providers.  If you are using  
10mbps they need to buy 10mbps from Provider A & 10 mbps from  
Provider B.  That way if A fails then your traffic will automatically  
switch to Provider B.  So, if your provider is paying $30/mbps for  
bandwidth that is really $60/mbps.  That price also doesn't cover the  
amazing support or the insanely priced routers that are needed to  
handle the ever increasing bloat that is the Internet routing table.

Not knowing all of your specifics I think you are paying a fair price.

--
Matthew S. Crocker
President
Crocker Communications, Inc.
Internet Division
PO BOX 710
Greenfield, MA 01302-0710
http://www.crocker.com