Coop Peering Fabric??

Tue Aug 12 12:32:16 UTC 2008

On Aug 12, 2008, at 3:37 AM, Paul Wall wrote:

> If it were as easy as you make it sound, I can assure you people would
> be doing it.

People are.  I (and others) mentioned SIX & TorIX, plus I mentioned  
PaNAP.  Then there's AtlantaIX, although that recently got slurped by  
TelX.  (Hrmmm, could one of the "dangers" of a coop be "borg'ed by for- 
profit entity looking to rip out every cent they can"? :)

Tons of others exist, in big and little markets.  There's one in 365  
Main SF, there's KleyReX in the same building as DE-CIX, Big APE in  
111 8th, NYCx there too, ChicagoIX just opened, etc., etc.

Trust me, it _is_ being done.

> Also, does your Equinix MSA contain a non-compete clause, which could
> be interpreted to mean you can't run a competing IX (metro fabric,
> exchange, whatever) out of their facilities?  I hear many do.

So don't run it in an Equinix or S&D cage.

-- 
TTFN,
patrick

> On Mon, Aug 11, 2008 at 11:15 PM, Deepak Jain <deepak at ai.net> wrote:
>> Warning: This may actually be operational too.
>>
>> Given Cogent (and others) recent pursuit of sub $4/mb/s transit...  
>> and the
>> relatively flat cost of a "paid" peering fabric (even at 10G) and  
>> the O(N)
>> costs for cross-connects, the thought of revisiting the old peering  
>> coops
>> presented itself again.
>>
>> Assuming 10G PNI model: Assuming even nominal cross-connect fees of
>> $100-$300/month per fiber pair, plus router port costs for each  
>> private peer
>> (assuming you aren't at >10% utilization on the port) at a commercial
>> exchange, you are eating a pretty significant cost per megabit you  
>> are
>> actually moving. (plug in your numbers here). Assumption: Above 1Gb/s
>> utilization, this makes sense or you are counting on growth.
>>
>> Below 10% you would normally go to a paid peering fabric where you  
>> are
>> paying cross connect + a flat port charge + router port for 1->N  
>> peers and
>> hoping that enough utilization occurs that you get >10% utilization  
>> (to
>> recover capex, opex, etc) and then whatever additional utilization  
>> you need
>> to cover the flat port charge or you are counting on growth.
>>
>> 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),
>> private-VLANs all-around, or to only-mutually approved peers (e.g.  
>> via an
>> automated web interface, prior art) to avoid many of the /old/  
>> issues. No
>> requirement for multi-lateral peering. You could peer, sell  
>> transit, buy
>> transit, multicast, etc.
>>
>> The way I figure it, it removes approximately an order of magnitude  
>> from the
>> operational cost of peering with more than a handful of your  
>> largest single
>> talkers. Especially as 100G LAN Ethernet becomes production before  
>> 100G WAN
>> connections become commonplace. Economic theory (assuming that  
>> worked on the
>> Internet) suggests this would allow for the increase in number of  
>> peers by
>> approximately an order of magnitude (maybe more).
>>
>> Does this actually improve the present-day "rationale" to peer, or  
>> are most
>> operations' costs so far above (from long haul, etc) or so far  
>> below (since
>> the cost of transit has dropped so much) that this is no longer a  
>> relevant
>> part of the equation?
>>
>> Warning: This may actually be operational too.
>>
>> Deepak Jain
>> AiNET
>>
>>
>