Peering point speed publicly available?

Fri Jul 2 01:57:55 UTC 2004

On 7/1/04 8:14 PM, "Bill Woodcock" <woody at pch.net> wrote:

> 
>> I have a question regarding information on my ISP's peering relationships.
>> Are the speeds of some or all peering relationships public knowledge, and if
>> so, where can I find this?  By speed, I mean bandwidth (DS3, OC3, 100Mbps,
>> 1Gbps, etc.).  I am trying to transfer large stuff from my AS, through my
>> ISP, through another ISP, to another AS, and I'm wondering how fast the
>> peering point is between the ISPs.
> 
> ISPs don't register it or publish it anywhere, generally, and if you ask
> salescritters, they're likely to say "At the speed of LIGHT!!!" or some
> such.  But the two methods people would generally use to determine this
> externally would be first to do a bidirectional traceroute and look
> closely at the in-addr DNS names associated with the router interfaces on
> the IX or crossconnect, which, if you trust them, may give you some
> indication of speed.  Next, if you have time, you could run pathchar
> across the link.
> 
>                                 -Bill
> 
> 

Of course, the big issue isn't the size of the links - its utilization. Most
private peering links today are OC-12 to OC-192. Most big ISPs do this in a
half dozen locations - sometimes more, occasionally less. Of course, you'll
use the closest exit between ISPs.

Ask your ISP what the utilization of that link is - or what the packet loss
is, historically. They are much more likely to tell you that.

Its funny, you always see people asking about peering link sizes or
locations on RFP's, but they never ask about peering utilization or packet
loss. The former is both NDA and meaningless - the latter is terribly
important.

-- 
Daniel Golding
Network and Telecommunications Strategies
Burton Group