Peering - Benefits?

Fri Oct 31 17:02:23 UTC 2008

vijay gill writes:
>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.

The other factor worth considering is the level of control your
business plan supports giving up to third parties. This is more of a
problem for things like real-time voice or video, but the circumstance
can exist that depending on two even very good carriers may be
uncomfortable - particular the first time one of them has a systemic
issue.

>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.

Yep.

Joe