Interconnects

Richard A Steenbergen ras at e-gerbil.net
Fri May 17 14:57:35 UTC 2002


On Fri, May 17, 2002 at 11:48:32AM +0200, Iljitsch van Beijnum wrote:
> 
> A bunch of us are thinking about multihoming solutions for IPv6. For this
> purpose, it is useful to know a bit more about how actual networks (rather
> than the ones existing only as ASCII drawings) interconnect. So:
> 
> - What are the 12 - 18 most important interconnect locations in the world?
>   MAE East, the Ameritech, Sprint and PacBell NAPs, PAIX, LINX and AMS-IX
>   come to mind, but from where I'm sitting it's hard to judge whether
>   others are important or marginal.
> 
> - To how many of them do typical tier-1 and tier-2 networks connect?
> 
> - Using private or public interconnects?

Lets see...

Your dead or dieing classics are:
MAE East, MAE West, AADS, SprintNap, PBNap, and with luck any other ATM 
exchanges (and may they turn the power off on any remaining FDDI soon). 

The biggest exchange point in the US is probably PAIX in Palo Alto, and 
the biggest public exchange is probably LINX. Both of these are excellent 
places to be.

There are some relatively small regionals like NYIIX where you won't find
many large carriers, but they still have their own little nitch markets.  
For example, you won't find many of the Asian or European networks
anywhere else on the east coast, without going to PAIX-PAO or Europe
yourself.

Then we have "the rest". Equinix and PAIX are both trying to take over the
market for exhange points in the US (in similar markets, Equinix = SJC IAD
NYC ORD DFW LAX, PAIX += SEA ATL). But without even comparing the quality
of services offered, I believe Equinix will be the winner for the
following reasons:

  * Financial stability - Equinix is fairly close to being cash flow 
    positive, while PAIX is fairly close to going to the highest bidder.
  * Price - In these times of cost conciousness (and transit available 
    for less than the price of peering), many people are taking a step back
    and realizing that PAIX services are OUTRAGEOUSLY priced vs the
    competition. Some big carriers are turning down their PAIX switch
    ports, even at Palo Alto.
  * Carrier choice - The big carriers have clearly all chosen Equinix as
    the location for their future peerings (with the exception of 
    AboveNet, who obviously will not set foot in there :P).
  * More diverse market - While PAIX doubles your rack price if you aren't
    buying a switch port, Equinix markets to end users looking for carrier
    diversity (and they have the facilities to support this). This has
    brought the big carriers to sell transit as well as to peer.

Of course each market has their own advantages and disadvantages, for 
example in Dallas both PAIX and Equinix sit right beside each other at the 
Infomart. In others, one or the other is out of space.

-- 
Richard A Steenbergen <ras at e-gerbil.net>       http://www.e-gerbil.net/ras
PGP Key ID: 0x138EA177  (67 29 D7 BC E8 18 3E DA  B2 46 B3 D8 14 36 FE B6)



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