Carrier classification

Sun May 14 07:24:18 UTC 2017

On 5/13/17 5:56 PM, Mike Hammett wrote:
> This debate has spilled onto NANOG from Facebook now... 
>
> My point is that while the term tier-1 (meaning no transit) isn't wrong, that the whole system is now irrelevant. Look at the Wikipedia list of "Tier 1" networks and then look at CAIDA, Dyn, QRator, HE's BGP Report, etc. There's some overlap between the historical "tier 1s" and the other rankings of usefulness, but the "tier 1s" are no longer the dominate networks they once were. 
What I witnessed in Asia-Pac, Africa and parts of Europe, is that
inexperienced engineers as well as sales & marketing people would use
the term "Tier 1" to refer to incumbent telecoms providers, especially
if they are either a monopoly or had the largest customer base in that
country and/or region.

Nowadays, I'm hearing this less and less, but it's not completely gone.

Mark.