Evaluating Tier 1 Internet providers

Tue Aug 27 19:02:39 UTC 2013

Based on various conversation threads on Nanog I've come up with a few
criteria for evaluating Tier 1 providers.  I'm open to add other criteria -
what would you add to this list?  And how would I get a quantitative or
qualitative measure of it?

routing stability

BGP community offerings

congestion issues

BGP Peering relationships

path diversity

IPv6 table size

Seems like everyone offers 5 9's service, 45 ms coast-to-coast, 24x7
customer support, 100/1Gbps/10Gbps with various DIR/CIR and burst rates.
I'm shopping for new service and want to do better than choosing on
reputation.  (or, is reputation also a criteria?)

much appreciated,

Eric Louie