Coop Peering Fabric??

Tue Aug 12 14:11:13 UTC 2008

On Aug 12, 2008, at 9:58 AM, David Diaz wrote:

> Love the Borg comment.

Thanx.

> 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.

Who said anything about larger traffic players?  What's wrong with a  
bunch of little guys getting together to trade traffic, for fun and  
profit?

The smaller guys might have a better focus on performance in the local  
area (gamers anyone?), plus they tend to pay more per Mbps because  
they don't have scale, which makes moving a little traffic off more  
economical.

All that said, Akamai is a pretty big network and they're present at a  
lot of these "small" IXen.  Ditto for local eyeball networks, e.g.  
Shaw @ SIX, Rogers @ TorIX, etc.

> 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.

Several small IXes have grown quite a bit with no or very small  
membership fees.  Look at the ones I mentioned.  I think SIX is the  
largest, but they're all not that tiny.

-- 
TTFN,
patrick