Coop Peering Fabric??

Tue Aug 12 13:56:17 UTC 2008

Patrick

Love the Borg comment.

Great thread.  Old topic.  It recycles every couple of years.  Not to  
speak for telx or Mike L but I do not think anyone was motivated to  
Borg anything but to support AIX.  10Gig ports are expensive.

I like the idea of more exchange points in that they usually provide  
more recovery pts and redundancy, allow the sharing of skills and  
knowledge in the local community, and provide flexibility for growth  
and change of the internet. How many COs do we have? There has long  
been the argument of how many IXs are needed, would it be 1 per  
state?  What happens with Voip, IPtv etc.

As for coops I think the argument is would the larger traffic players  
feel comfortable connecting and making it a part of their networks?   
Who are the anchors and 1st movers?  What are the guarantees that any  
investment in infrastructure needed to get there will be recovered  
over X years... Will the coop fold before that pt? Wll it have the  
resources to upgrade.

I so not think a poison pill is needed. Perhaps just a group or  
company championing Coops and giving them booth-space at events,  
sponsoring conference travels, providing rack space etc.  But if it's  
in the BEST interest of the members to have a larger group come in and  
take over then what is the harm? What is the alternative, have members  
pay membership fees? Corp Sponsorship?

I agree on much of this. But as with most things it comes down to  
money. Do members have a financial incentive to join and what is the  
financial model to keep the Coop moving forward as a success.

David D

On Aug 12, 2008, at 8:32 AM, Patrick W. Gilmore wrote:

> 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
>>>
>>>
>>
>
>