Coop Peering Fabric??
Patrick W. Gilmore
patrick at ianai.net
Tue Aug 12 12:32:16 UTC 2008
On Aug 12, 2008, at 3:37 AM, Paul Wall wrote:
> If it were as easy as you make it sound, I can assure you people would
> be doing it.
People are. I (and others) mentioned SIX & TorIX, plus I mentioned
PaNAP. Then there's AtlantaIX, although that recently got slurped by
TelX. (Hrmmm, could one of the "dangers" of a coop be "borg'ed by for-
profit entity looking to rip out every cent they can"? :)
Tons of others exist, in big and little markets. There's one in 365
Main SF, there's KleyReX in the same building as DE-CIX, Big APE in
111 8th, NYCx there too, ChicagoIX just opened, etc., etc.
Trust me, it _is_ being done.
> Also, does your Equinix MSA contain a non-compete clause, which could
> be interpreted to mean you can't run a competing IX (metro fabric,
> exchange, whatever) out of their facilities? I hear many do.
So don't run it in an Equinix or S&D cage.
--
TTFN,
patrick
> On Mon, Aug 11, 2008 at 11:15 PM, Deepak Jain <deepak at ai.net> wrote:
>> Warning: This may actually be operational too.
>>
>> Given Cogent (and others) recent pursuit of sub $4/mb/s transit...
>> and the
>> relatively flat cost of a "paid" peering fabric (even at 10G) and
>> the O(N)
>> costs for cross-connects, the thought of revisiting the old peering
>> coops
>> presented itself again.
>>
>> Assuming 10G PNI model: Assuming even nominal cross-connect fees of
>> $100-$300/month per fiber pair, plus router port costs for each
>> private peer
>> (assuming you aren't at >10% utilization on the port) at a commercial
>> exchange, you are eating a pretty significant cost per megabit you
>> are
>> actually moving. (plug in your numbers here). Assumption: Above 1Gb/s
>> utilization, this makes sense or you are counting on growth.
>>
>> Below 10% you would normally go to a paid peering fabric where you
>> are
>> paying cross connect + a flat port charge + router port for 1->N
>> peers and
>> hoping that enough utilization occurs that you get >10% utilization
>> (to
>> recover capex, opex, etc) and then whatever additional utilization
>> you need
>> to cover the flat port charge or you are counting on growth.
>>
>> A "coop", best-effort switch fabric colo'd at a few sites would allow
>> participants to peer off traffic at a price of the order of a single
>> cross-connect (~$500/month per 10G port is possible, maybe less),
>> private-VLANs all-around, or to only-mutually approved peers (e.g.
>> via an
>> automated web interface, prior art) to avoid many of the /old/
>> issues. No
>> requirement for multi-lateral peering. You could peer, sell
>> transit, buy
>> transit, multicast, etc.
>>
>> The way I figure it, it removes approximately an order of magnitude
>> from the
>> operational cost of peering with more than a handful of your
>> largest single
>> talkers. Especially as 100G LAN Ethernet becomes production before
>> 100G WAN
>> connections become commonplace. Economic theory (assuming that
>> worked on the
>> Internet) suggests this would allow for the increase in number of
>> peers by
>> approximately an order of magnitude (maybe more).
>>
>> Does this actually improve the present-day "rationale" to peer, or
>> are most
>> operations' costs so far above (from long haul, etc) or so far
>> below (since
>> the cost of transit has dropped so much) that this is no longer a
>> relevant
>> part of the equation?
>>
>> Warning: This may actually be operational too.
>>
>> Deepak Jain
>> AiNET
>>
>>
>
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