Funding for NAPs...

Mon Oct 9 22:55:25 UTC 1995

> Just to confirm, what Gordon said about the Bellcore/AADS/PB funding
> arrangement is true.  AADS and PB do not receive any money from NSF for
> NAPs.  Bellcore receives a small amount for coordinating the project, and for
> some network management research.
> 
> Does the $2K (per month?) for connecting to the MFS NAP/MAE include access
> costs, or just the colocation charge?
> 						Dave

It includes access.  Our 10mbit connection to MAE-East is not *at* MAE-East,
but at one of the "on-net" buildings that MFS has wired with fiber.  ("Lit",
actually).  In fact, there are 4 MAE-East connections there, 2 10mbit, a T3,
and a 100mbit FDDI connection.

And the 100mbit FDDI connections are a great deal: $5000/mo dedicated; 
$4250/mo on the shared FDDI ring.

All prices include local loops to on-net buildings or space (which should 
soon again become available) at MAE-East.

Until the Gigaswitch was in, it was easy to see how they made money - 
etherswitches and Netedge boxes aren't *that* expensive, plus since MAE-East
was originally mostly colocated stuff, they made money on the local loops
(well, MFS Telecom did).

And up here in Philadelphia, MFS is taking a T3 to Pennsauken and providing
4 10mbit connections off of it for $4k/month.  They make out great on the
deal the customers save a few thousand a month until they need a FDDI
connection/co-location (which isn't available now @ SprintNAP anyway).

MFS asked about doing a MAE-Philadelphia but my advice was that the bigger
entities would show up at Pennsauken.  Net Access is working on a Frame/SMDS
peering plan - the RFC will go out to the ISPs/NSPs with Frame connectivity
later this month.  Basically, those providers with T1 frame and/or multi-
megabit SMDS connections may want to peer with each other over the Bell
clouds to keep some traffic local, independant of larger peering plans.

Avi