Tier-1 without their own backbone?

Wed Aug 27 21:53:58 UTC 2003

I guess it depends on your traffic type and destination.  Level 3 has 
a lot of connectivity to content providers such as yahoo and 
microsoft.  As Joel P pointed out they have been a reliable backbone 
with a lot of capacity.

They also have knowledgeable peering people although they lean 
towards the restrictive side on policy (starting about a 18 months 
ago)

Dave

At 12:32 -0700 8/27/03, Rick Ernst wrote:
>We are sending out feelers for adding an additional DS-3, or possibly frac
>OC-3.  One of the responses came back with "we won't be competive with
><provider> because they don't have their own backbone.
>
>Is there a cross-reference for provider vs network backbone, or is this just
>something that we have to ask each provider for?  I "assume" that UU, Sprint,
>and AT&T are self-owned backbones, but others... ?
>
>One of the providers we are looking at is Level-3.  Any comments good/bad on
>reliability and clue?  We already have UU, Sprint, and AT&T.  I also realize
>that the "they suck less" list changes continuously... :)
>
>Thanks,
>Rick