Current street prices for US Internet Transit

Wed Aug 18 16:51:39 UTC 2004

> 
> With these US street prices in mind, how can anyone justify paying
> prices of some commercial exchanges (the last offer I got from PAIX Palo
> Alto was USD 5500 per month for a FE port about a year ago, and Equinix
> Ashburn was not much cheaper). Please note: I'm not talking of the
> technical advantages of peering.

Or, perhaps the better question is. How can one justify the cost of 
_public_ peering when fiber cross-connects are $200-$300/month each. 
That is at least 20-40 fiber direct connects [twice that if you & your 
peers split the cost of cross-connects]. If you only need 1Gb/s of 
cross-connect capacity you can take a 3x50 switch [or use it as a 
router] and terminate all of the peering sessions on it or via 
VLAN-trunking directly on your real router [C/J/what have you]. Your 
hardware cost is marginally increased and your capacity is MANY times 
larger.

I don't think there are too many exchanges anymore that have 80+ active 
peers. If you do participate in such an exchange, have 80 peers on it, 
and don't exceed a single port's speed, shame on you. :)

DJ