multi-homing

Mon Dec 6 20:12:29 UTC 1999

Roeland M.J. Meyer <rmeyer at mhsc.com> wrote on Dec 5:
> For large capacity sites, colo is the only way, with potential self-homing
> within two years. It just can't happen faster than that. Also, smaller
> providers are out, because of public peering point congestion and that is
> usually their only avenue.

As someone else pointed out, us smaller providers often have multiple
connections to tier-1's.  In the past, it was likely that your
friendly local ISP had only two tier-1 pipes and your regional had a
big pipe into one of the NAPs.  But given the overwhelming market
consolidation of the tier-1's these days, independent regionals are
more likely to have done what we've done:  just go out and pay UUNET,
GTE, et al whatever their toll is so we can guarantee high
availability.  Even at those high prices, we can still provide better
service than any one of those companies can on its own within our
market (i.e. it's no big deal to UUNET if their Boston PoP goes down
for a few minutes, but it would be if _our_ Boston PoP went down).  What
I'm also finding these days is that, with the exception of UUNET, wholesale
pricing is favorable to us.

This business model has, in fact, recently sold well on Wall Street.  A
company called InterNAP just went public, and that's what they're doing.

> Large providers, with their own private
> dark-fiber network, leaving only last-mile traffic to the public Internet,
> appears to be the only way to go <sigh>.

I sure hope not...it takes even longer for them to bring up a new
long-haul link than it does for us to upgrade or bring in a new local
circuit to one of the major tier-1's.

-rich