Current street prices for US Internet Transit

Mon Aug 16 21:08:07 UTC 2004

On Mon, Aug 16, 2004 at 01:27:22PM -0700, William B. Norton wrote:
> From my conversations with folks in the Peering Coordinator Community, 
> round numbers here, one can pick up a used 7500 series router equipment
> now  for about $9K ! The configuration was with an OC-3, and FastE for
> peering, for about 25% of the new cost.

In Europe, for a lot less. Configurations like:
Cisco 7513 + 2xPSU-AC + 2xRSP4 + POSIP-OC3-40SM + VIP2-50 + PA-FE
went multiple times for 3300-3850 EUR on Ebay Germany.

> Caveat: When I walked the Cisco and Juniper contacts through the
> research paper ("Do ATM-based Internet Exchanges Make Sense Anymore?")
> they pointed to the software license as being non-transferable, and
> therefore requiring a new license from the vendor to be legitimate.

Yes, this is standard tactics. Fortunately, in Germany this is void
as the vendor can't make software license for specific hardware
non-transferrable, by law.

> There is also a re-certification process if you want to get the gear
> under service contract.

Yep, this is the tactic they use to catch "the rest". Sources told me
that the re-cert fee makes buying used gear almost totally
uninteresting. The fact that e.g. Juniper gear doesn't sell at all
on Ebay is a good indicator for success of this tactic.

With Cisco it's a different story... people get around service contracts
by just buying enough spares on the used market... it's cheap enough.
With Juniper it's more difficult as the offerings aren't as broad and
cheap.

> There are some used equipment vendors that claim to take care of
> these issues for you.

Interesting. I wonder how. :-P

Best regards,
Daniel