concern over public peering points [WAS: Peering point speed publicly available?]

Sat Jul 3 20:20:13 UTC 2004

On Sat, Jul 03, 2004 at 10:57:20AM -0700, Michael Smith wrote:
> 
> At the Seattle Internet Exchange a, granted, smaller peering exchange,
> you have to account for the following costs (and, mind you, this list is
> not exhaustive).
> 
> 1) 1 Rack
> 2) Space for the rack in a secure facility
> 3) AC for the equipment
> 4) Power for the equipment (including line and UPS)
> 5) Fiber and Copper runs to the facility for cross-connects
> 6) Terminations of (5)
> 7) O&M of space and gear
> 8) Layer 8 and 9 negotiation of (1) through (7) to keep costs down.
> 
> That's not a trivial set of expenses, particularly when there are
> limitations in place to recovering costs via non-cash methods, such as
> advertising the hosting of the exchange. 
> 
> Thankfully, there is some altruism on the behalf of several parties that
> allow the exchange to continue providing "zero cost" connections to
> participants.  I hardly think the cost of their time and effort is
> "marginal".

Which means that SIX's costs would be completely covered by charging each
member with a GigE port $1k/mo. I would rather pay them the $1k/mo with
the expectation that they will be able obtain quality hardware (which btw
doesn't necessarily mean running to their favorite vendor and asking for
the most expensive product available), provide reliable service, handle
growth, etc. I would not however, pay them $14k/mo for the same service.

I count 68 active participants on the SIX website. I won't venture a guess 
as to how many have GigE ports, and a few are connected from PAIX, etc, 
but I would bet that there is more than enough business available to cover 
the costs of intelligent spending. You could probably still give away 
FastE ports for free, and pretty much assume that any major ISP who can 
afford the GigE port and sees value in connecting with the smaller guys 
will go ahead and pay for it.

-- 
Richard A Steenbergen <ras at e-gerbil.net>       http://www.e-gerbil.net/ras
GPG Key ID: 0xF8B12CBC (7535 7F59 8204 ED1F CC1C 53AF 4C41 5ECA F8B1 2CBC)