Competition for Internap's FCP product.

Thu Feb 25 19:58:47 UTC 2010

The ability to manage bandwidth over multiple ISP links each of which
may charge variable rates per Mb, and also be billed by the 95th
percentile billing method, is the main justification for a device like
the Routescience product. In my experience ROI is captured in a
relatively short time.  Since Routescience uses the second and third
packets of the TCP 3-way handshake to calculate the fastest route to
destination prefixes, then this is an added bonus to the ability to dial
bandwidth up or down over numerous ISP links.

Also Routescience-type devices free up the person who sits and
calculates BGP best routes manually, so that person can perform more
productive and efficient work in other areas.

-----Original Message-----
From: Rubens Kuhl [mailto:rubensk at gmail.com] 
Sent: Thursday, February 25, 2010 11:23 AM
To: nanog at nanog.org
Subject: Re: Competition for Internap's FCP product.

Is your burstable bandwidth cost high enough to pay 100K for a gear
just to meet the commitments ? NAGIOS/CACTI monitoring alerts sent to
someone (which may be hired help from any place in the world) would
probably beat that in cost effectiveness.

The performance requirement is where a line is drawn between manual
configuration and automated BGP manipulation.

Rubens

On Thu, Feb 25, 2010 at 11:08 AM, Drew Weaver <drew.weaver at thenap.com>
wrote:
> Hi,
>
> As my Avaya CNA/Route Science box begins to seriously age, and without
the support of Avaya for 'Service Provider' uses of the product, I have
been looking for alternatives to the product.
>
> The value we get from this product is mainly in the ability to easily
manage our bandwidth commitments in a hands off way without having to
manually manipulate anything. I have no real illusions that the
'performance' side of things is 'arguable' at best with these sorts of
products due to the nature of the Internet.
>
> Internap to me stands out as essentially the only alternative to this
product, but they have been tremendously difficult to work with, they
won't allow us to demo a unit to see if it offers the same functionality
as our current solution. The reason they won't allow us to a demo a unit
is because they 'don't stock them'. So basically they have 0 units until
someone orders one, that is fine if that is their policy but that hasn't
really been our experience with other hardware vendors that want close
to 100K for a piece of niche equipment.
>
> My questions are:
>
> -What are other people doing who currently use or used the Avaya/RS
product in the past?
> -Does anyone know of any competition in this space (aside from hiring
a guy that sits there and does this for us manually)?
> -Has Cisco's OER/PFR made any progress in the last few years (is
anyone using it?)
>
> Sorry to disturb,
>
> -Drew
>
>
>