Worldly Thoughts

Sun May 12 00:05:01 UTC 1996

] > Or, possible some small providers buy a multi-megabit circuit from a
] > large provider who gives them transit.  The small provider then connects
] > at a single NAP and picks up bilateral peering sessions with a bunch 
] > of people there.  The result is offloading traffic from their 
] > "transit link", which stands a good chance of being priced as a 
] > "burstable" link. (pay for what you use)  That gives the small 
] > provider an economic incentive to operate in this manner.  

] Quite a few CIX members operate this way.  The interesting question in my
] mind is whether the "big guys" (defaultless nets, for the purposes of this
] discussion) think that this represents unfair competition or not.

  We've a defaultless net, but I'm not sure that I'm considered a
  'Big Guy'.  Hell, we only route 1% of the internet, but maybe if I
  lost my aggregates I could be bigger ;)

  The hidden metric that davec above doesn't consider is latency.

  If I peer at a NAP, I forgo the latency my upstream 'multi-megabit
  circuit' incurs.

  This is a consideration, you know.

  -alan