Sprint VS. Qwest

Fri Oct 18 17:18:47 UTC 2002

What possible reason would the average small transit buyer have for
knowing the details of a carrier's peering arrangements - especially
carriers like Sprint and Qwest?

Both Sprint and Qwest are, most would agree, transit-free, "tier 1"
networks. They interconnect with all other similarly large networks. How
much more do you want? The size of their interconnections to 701? I'm not
sure how that is useful.

The only really useful information about peering from carriers of this
size might be packet loss statistics across private peering connections.
That is an actual performance metric, and could tend to seperate some
providers from others, and reward those who keep their peering connections
properly sized. Perhaps this is what you mean by "better" peering?
Locations and sizes won't help you at all, if this is what you are looking
for.

I suppose the question is, what is your goal? If you are looking for
transit, there are numerous criteria -

- price
- customer service
- clueful engineer accessability
- network stability
- network "reach" - i.e. do they have a POP where you want to
interconnect?
- Packetloss and latency metrics
- Special features - rich community set, multicast, etc

- Dan

On Thu, 17 Oct 2002, Stephen J. Wilcox wrote:

>
>
> Well Sprints non-peering policy is second to none if that helps with C&W a close
> second..... :)
>
> Steve
>
> On Wed, 16 Oct 2002, Christopher K. Neitzert wrote:
>
> >
> > List,
> >
> > Neither Sprint nor Qwest are serious about earning my business and are not
> > providing me with their network peering details.  I was hoping that the
> > list might have the collective resources to help me determine who has
> > better peering.
> >
> > thanks
> >
> > chirstopher
> >
> >
> >
>
>