Worldly Thoughts

Sun May 12 13:53:30 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.

Hey, depends on your upstream provider and the NAP you're talking
about... for some "Large" providers and at least one NAP, the reverse
is true.  =-)

davec