Provider credibility - does it matter? was Re: Inter-provider relations

Fri Oct 25 20:07:04 UTC 1996

>I think the argument is undermined by the fact that peering in Europe is
>in a fairly dismal state.  Were there a MAE-{London, Paris, Prague} I
>somehow think that the big five at least might throw a T3 or two over.
>Until that happens, nothing will change.  Maybe as access points start 
>springing up in Japan, the Phillipines, etc., the roadblocks to such a 
>cooperative project will start to be removed.

This deserves some explanation. Peering in Europe is actually pretty
good, with international perring points in places like Stockholm,
Amsterdam, Paris, and London.. There are lots of national IX's,
further enhancing the standard.

So what's the problem? Basically, one organisation, Ebone, which
operates a fairly large pan-European net, won't peer with others. This
means that European customers connected to non-Ebone connected
providers like Global One lack European connectivity without going
through the US. Ebone provides great connectivity at cost, but the big
US NSPs making presences in Europe naturally don't want to buy
bandwidth from someone like Ebone. We'll see what happens.

- Jakob Faarvang
cybernet.dk