NANOG67 - Tipping point of community and sponsor bashing?

Thu Jun 16 02:58:10 UTC 2016

On 6/15/16 4:03 PM, Bill Woodcock wrote:
> There’s a difference between the cost and the product.  As regards the cost, Arnold is exactly right.  Across the many hundreds of exchanges that we’ve worked with over the past 22 years, our observation has been that, at a rough average, most IXPs spend 45% of their first-year effort on location selection, 45% on governance definition and establishment, and 10% on technical decisions and implementation.  But the total effort and the governance portion both increase drastically for those that choose to handle money; at a very, very rough average, about four-fold.  In subsequent years, location selection generally drops away to near zero, except in cases like the JINX, and technical work dips for the first couple of years, and then spikes once every three years or so as switches are replaced and new configs are needed.  Many exchanges have an annual in-person meeting where elections are conducted and policy changes ratified, so that typically becomes the largest ongoing expense, as Arnold implies.

Why do IXes seek to create a bureaucracy that needs to be fed increasing 
sums of money?

~Seth