Cost of transit and options in APAC

Wed Aug 11 19:29:37 UTC 2010

Nice to see this change....

APAC has been obliged to pay the cost to peer with the US (long distance links are expensive). Now that US wants to peer with Asia, pricing may become more balanced...

----- Original Message -----
From: "David Ulevitch" <david at ulevitch.com>
To: nanog at merit.edu
Sent: Thursday, 12 August, 2010 7:00:12 AM
Subject: Cost of transit and options in APAC

Hi Nanog,

As we extend our reach into Asia, we're finding that our typical
carriers (see: upstreams of AS36692) who provide service to us in
North America and Europe are not able to offer us service in Asia
either (1) at all or (2) at prices remotely resembling our pricing in
NA and EU.  For example: Level(3) simply has no presence in Asia and
on the pricing side, NTT, GBLX, Verizon and others' pricing is many
times higher than their NA and EU pricing.  In most cases, it's 10 or
more times higher.

Additionally, some of the networks seem to market their network based
on their reach into the US, rather than their reach into actual users
in Asia, which is what we're looking for.

So my question is, what are non-APAC-based networks doing as they
expand into Asia for transit beyond peering with whomever will peer
with them to get close to actual users in Asia?

Are people using regional carriers?  Are people just paying the
"crazy" (compared to US pricing) bandwidth costs?  Are people doing
peering-only setups out there?  Any help would be useful -- hopefully
this is on-topic for NANOG, which I think it is, since I'm curious how
NA operators deal with these challenges as they expand into APAC.

I'm happy to summarize responses later if there is interest.

Thanks,
David