AOL & Cogent

Sat Dec 21 19:36:40 UTC 2002

That's actually an interesting thought.  From AOLs perspective it 
mght be cheaper to buy transit from L3 then peering with so many 
people especialy privately.  Ports do cost money.  From the business 
perspective I think Bill Norton has shown that sometimes transit 
might be more attractive then peering, depending on several factors.

I doubt L3 will increase their peering, they are in a very strict 
mode right now.

One factor that was brought up privately by someone with cogent 
experience is "perception is reality." Something I was fond of saying 
at AS4006.  It seems a dangerous slippery slope, once you are on the 
ropes and a big peer drops you, does it not set the stage for others 
to quickly do so also?  As part of that I would also not quickly 
discount the human factor.   Let's face it there are not that many 
people that have been doing peering for awhile, it's a small friendly 
group.

I do find there does seem to be a strange undercurrent flowing 
against cogent.  A cogent thread seems to pop up every couple of 
months, and in the space talking to people they seem to bear the 
brunt of rough comments.   Wonder if that is because of the pricing 
pressure they are bringing at >$30meg, or it its a different 
perception of acheiving tier1 easily etc.... just thinking outloud.

David

At 21:44 -0500 12/20/02, Ringdahl, Dwight (WebUseNet) wrote:
>If I were Level3, I'd give them (cogent) a bigger peering pipe, and take the
>money from the larger, more stable company AOL... Might not be common
>peering sense, but damn good business sense....
>
>>>  Further, if L3/Cogent are settlement-free and both parties are interested
>>>  in growing the size of their peering connections, wouldn't it make better
>>>  sense

-- 

David Diaz
dave at smoton.net [Email]
pagedave at smoton.net [Pager]
www.smoton.net [Peering Site under development]
Smotons (Smart Photons) trump dumb photons