How to choose a transit provider?

Sat Dec 15 17:41:50 UTC 2018

Of course YMMV. 

I'm speaking from the perspective of ISPs between say 300 and 10k customers. I'm knee deep in that community. 

I'm also generally speaking of facilities that don't have astronomical cross connect charges (so not Equinix, DRT, etc.). In some places, the cross connect cost is nominal, so we just cover it in the IX fee. 

----- 
Mike Hammett 
Intelligent Computing Solutions 

Midwest Internet Exchange 

The Brothers WISP 

----- Original Message -----

From: nanog-isp at mail.com 
To: nanog at nanog.org 
Cc: "Mike Hammett" <nanog at ics-il.net> 
Sent: Saturday, December 15, 2018 11:37:28 AM 
Subject: Re: How to choose a transit provider? 

Mike Hammett wrote: 
> Usually, DIA (as transit delivered to a customer) is more expensive than transport + transit + small colo 
> (1U\2U stuff) + IX... at least as observed by many of my brethren. 

Is this really true in the general case? 

Adding colo and IX to transport and transit involves at least one additional cross connect and an IX port fee. This is likely to push the total above the pure DIA price. 

However, regardless of how the numbers pencil out, this isn't really a fair comparison. For small ISPs, the yardstick against which adding an IX to the mix is usually measured against is the marginal cost of IP transit. Given that the cost of transport is fixed, is it more economical to buy more IP transit or to join an IX? 

Transit being so cheap means that joining an IX isn't always so enticing from a financial perspective, although there are other non-monetary benefits. 

I certainly subscribe to the notion that transport + transit is usually less expensive than DIA, but this does depend on the market and location. 

Jared 

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