Definition of Tier-1

Fri Jun 8 16:16:36 UTC 2001

On Fri, 8 Jun 2001, E.B. Dreger wrote:

> I've seen people colo'ed at AboveNet and Exodus claiming to be "Tier-1"
> themselves.
>
> IMESHO, "Tier-1" = provider who wishes to believe that they are something
> special, but cannot provide any facts to substantiate their claim... hence
> they resort to vaguely-defined-at-best sales BS.
>

That sales BS is probably prompted by customers telling sales people that
they won't buy service from anyone but a "tier 1" provider.  This leads to
many creative definitions of tier 1.

Normally, I've found that the customer doesn't actually mean that they
want to buy service from only a transit-free provider, and the ones who
do want to buy service from only a transit-free provider know who they
need to buy service from, so there's a mismatch between the
quasi-technical "transit-free" definition of Tier 1 and the marketingland
"big backbone" definition.

I'm not going to argue with someone's marketing department about whether
they can sell a T1 to BobCo without defining themselves as "tier 1".
Hell, I'm not even going to argue with my marketing department about
it.  The term is so depreciated in the real world that it is like telling
someone they can't call a Canon copier a Xerox machine.

-travis