RE: AOL Cogent
Been on vacation so sorry for the late response but we're talking fiber here, not ICs. How about this for an analogy: When I upgraded from ISDN to Cable, my Internet habits changed considerably. Large downloads were no longer something to be avoided and that 250Kbps audio/video stream could run in the background 24/7 without interfering with my other traffic. While you may visit the same old web pages after upgrading your computer, upgrading your connectivity typically results in significant changes in traffic patterns. Computers have been capable of broadband connectivity for decades. No need to upgrade to use more bandwidth. :) So let's change your analogy to the day after you upgraded from dialup to broadband... Just my 2ยข. Best regards, __ Al Rowland -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Mike Leber Sent: Sunday, December 29, 2002 11:08 PM To: Paul Vixie Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: AOL Cogent [SNIP] To illustrate how moores law and the hypothetical end user bandwidth demand law are different, for anybody that has upgraded their personal workstation to twice the processor speed or greater, to do the exact same end user task (i.e. visit a website) the day after you upgraded did you generate twice as much bandwidth? probably not. Mike. +- H U R R I C A N E - E L E C T R I C +-+ | Mike Leber Direct Internet Connections Voice 510 580 4100 | | Hurricane Electric Web Hosting Colocation Fax 510 580 4151 | | [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.he.net | +- --+
Re: AOL Cogent
On Sat, Dec 28, 2002 at 09:45:21PM -0500, Richard A Steenbergen wrote: 2. I think I asked this before, why wouldn't Cogent prepend customer prefixes to Level3 or set BGP4 community for multihomed sites, homed w/ Cogent + someone else. You got your answer to this before, what part wasn't clear? Cogent isn't congested in the inbound direction, only outbound to Level 3. The best they could do is lower their localpref for 3356, which I would surely hope they have done already. I understand very well that there is no problem on the inbound of Cogent from Level3. For my not-so-bright customers I simply want traceroutes to look good when they run one from Level3-homed site. Obviously a ~5-7 hops to us looks really disturbing, try to explain to one of them that there is no problem. Enough said. -Basil
Re: AOL Cogent
On Mon, Dec 30, 2002 at 05:37:10AM -0600, Basil Kruglov wrote: On Sat, Dec 28, 2002 at 09:45:21PM -0500, Richard A Steenbergen wrote: 2. I think I asked this before, why wouldn't Cogent prepend customer prefixes to Level3 or set BGP4 community for multihomed sites, homed w/ Cogent + someone else. You got your answer to this before, what part wasn't clear? Cogent isn't congested in the inbound direction, only outbound to Level 3. The best they could do is lower their localpref for 3356, which I would surely hope they have done already. I understand very well that there is no problem on the inbound of Cogent from Level3. For my not-so-bright customers I simply want traceroutes to look good when they run one from Level3-homed site. Obviously a ~5-7 hops to us looks really disturbing, try to explain to one of them that there is no problem. Enough said. -Basil Then make a press release for your not so bright customers, and explain every single detail rather than asking a company to change their entire routing policy because you're too lazy to educate your customers on how traceroute shouldn't be used as a tool to gauge performance. And if you can't explain it to them, then you should step back and look at who you really have for customers. Enough said. -- Omachonu Ogali Information Wave Technologies [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.informationwave.net
Re: AOL Cogent
On Mon, Dec 30, 2002 at 08:14:45AM -0500, Omachonu Ogali wrote: For my not-so-bright customers I simply want traceroutes to look good when they run one from Level3-homed site. Obviously a ~5-7 hops to us looks really disturbing, try to explain to one of them that there is no problem. Then make a press release for your not so bright customers, and explain every single detail rather than asking a company to change their entire routing policy because you're too lazy to educate your customers on how traceroute shouldn't be used as a tool to gauge performance. And if you can't explain it to them, then you should step back and look at who you really have for customers. Enough said. Great. Thanks for the PR tip. I never intended them to change their entire routing policy just for my laziness, if you insist ;) It's been going on for 2 and 1/2+ weeks with no definitive date/solution/workaround on when it's going to be fixed. Now I've made an attempt trying to show what could be done; perhaps move some butts to actually get something done. Speaking of my customers or perspective customers, I don't get to choose often who they are. Maybe you do, I don't. Happy New Year, -Basil
Re: AOL Cogent
In a message written on Sun, Dec 29, 2002 at 10:32:25PM +, Paul Vixie wrote: there we go again, talking technology and making the technological kind of sense. peering isn't a technology decision, it's a business decision. This depends on how you define business decision. I view a business decision as one where a company selling a product gets to make choices about that product - but, and this is a big part - remains in business. Having the product work in the first place is a business requirement. I don't buy into the logic that making a (known) broken product is a business decision, as no one makes a business decision with a known, up-front outcome of failure. A business decision is something like choosing to put cheap plastic trim in a car and sell it cheap, or the best Italian leather and sell it for a lot of money. Building a car that doesn't break down every 10 miles and needs to be towed back to the garage isn't a business decision, it's a requirement to be in the car business at all. Similarly to peering, a base amount is required to make this crazy thing we all run work. As we've seen with companies like PSI, those who terminate, or loose significant peering generally end up dead. So there are really two things to talk about. From a technological point of view what's the minimum amount of peering necessary to make things work, and then from a business perspective what further optimizations can be made to make your customers more happy, or reduce your costs, or both. Trying to make it all a business decision is as wrong as trying to make it all about technology. Looking at only one side gives you have the picture. In a message written on Sun, Dec 29, 2002 at 09:12:16PM +, Paul Vixie wrote: ...at least you know they are paying SOMEBODY, thus supporting the market you want to be in. you can then compete in that market. if everybody who could peer in N places worldwide could just get peering, then all kinds of per-bit revenue for high tier network owners would turn into per-port revenue for exchange point operators. where's the market in that? how could a high tier even exist in those conditions? Argument #1, don't peer with the little guy because it takes revenue away from ISP's in general. In a message written on Sun, Dec 29, 2002 at 10:32:25PM +, Paul Vixie wrote: as a local operator myself (ISC), i know that i should not expect peering other than if someone wants their customers to have better access to the f-root server or the kernel.org ftp server or whatever. it's actually easier for me, as a nonprofit, to attract what mr. bill calls 'content peering' relationships, since i don't compete with the folks i peer with. Argument #2, it's easy for me, a little guy to get peering because I don't compete with the ISP's, I just buy from them. So which is it? Do you peer with the little guys who don't run networks because content peering is good, or do you not peer with them because it forces them to buy from somebody, and if everyone does that it's good for ISP's in general? It seems to me you want to have your cake and eat it too. -- Leo Bicknell - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - CCIE 3440 PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/ Read TMBG List - [EMAIL PROTECTED], www.tmbg.org msg07667/pgp0.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: AOL Cogent
Is it just me or does all this make Internap's Business model look really good? At 9:50 -0500 12/30/02, Leo Bicknell wrote: In a message written on Sun, Dec 29, 2002 at 10:32:25PM +, Paul Vixie wrote: there we go again, talking technology and making the technological kind of sense. peering isn't a technology decision, it's a business decision. This depends on how you define business decision. I view a business decision as one where a company selling a product gets to make choices about that product - but, and this is a big part - remains in business. Having the product work in the first place is a business requirement. I don't buy into the logic that making a (known) broken product is a business decision, as no one makes a business decision with a known, up-front outcome of failure. A business decision is something like choosing to put cheap plastic trim in a car and sell it cheap, or the best Italian leather and sell it for a lot of money. Building a car that doesn't break down every 10 miles and needs to be towed back to the garage isn't a business decision, it's a requirement to be in the car business at all. Similarly to peering, a base amount is required to make this crazy thing we all run work. As we've seen with companies like PSI, those who terminate, or loose significant peering generally end up dead. So there are really two things to talk about. From a technological point of view what's the minimum amount of peering necessary to make things work, and then from a business perspective what further optimizations can be made to make your customers more happy, or reduce your costs, or both. Trying to make it all a business decision is as wrong as trying to make it all about technology. Looking at only one side gives you have the picture. In a message written on Sun, Dec 29, 2002 at 09:12:16PM +, Paul Vixie wrote: ...at least you know they are paying SOMEBODY, thus supporting the market you want to be in. you can then compete in that market. if everybody who could peer in N places worldwide could just get peering, then all kinds of per-bit revenue for high tier network owners would turn into per-port revenue for exchange point operators. where's the market in that? how could a high tier even exist in those conditions? Argument #1, don't peer with the little guy because it takes revenue away from ISP's in general. In a message written on Sun, Dec 29, 2002 at 10:32:25PM +, Paul Vixie wrote: as a local operator myself (ISC), i know that i should not expect peering other than if someone wants their customers to have better access to the f-root server or the kernel.org ftp server or whatever. it's actually easier for me, as a nonprofit, to attract what mr. bill calls 'content peering' relationships, since i don't compete with the folks i peer with. Argument #2, it's easy for me, a little guy to get peering because I don't compete with the ISP's, I just buy from them. So which is it? Do you peer with the little guys who don't run networks because content peering is good, or do you not peer with them because it forces them to buy from somebody, and if everyone does that it's good for ISP's in general? It seems to me you want to have your cake and eat it too. -- Leo Bicknell - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - CCIE 3440 PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/ Read TMBG List - [EMAIL PROTECTED], www.tmbg.org Content-Type: application/pgp-signature Content-Disposition: inline Attachment converted: Superbook HD:Untitled 337 (/) (000F0AD7) -- David Diaz [EMAIL PROTECTED] [Email] [EMAIL PROTECTED] [Pager] www.smoton.net [Peering Site under development] Smotons (Smart Photons) trump dumb photons
Re: AOL Cogent
Thus spake David Diaz [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Is it just me or does all this make Internap's Business model look really good? http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=INAPd=t EPS (ttm) -1.23 -- triple their current share price -- doesn't make their business model look so hot. S
Re: AOL Cogent
Similarly to peering, a base amount is required to make this crazy thing we all run work. As we've seen with companies like PSI, those who terminate, or loose significant peering generally end up dead. no part of worldcom's failure traces to uunet's decision to restrict their peering back in 1993/1994. in fact, that decision was has been spectacularly successful from a business standpoint. unfortunately, one example does not a trend make. also unfortunately, one example can be terrifically inspiring to others. so while i accept your use of the word generally, i have to say it doesn't look that way to the business people who have quarterly numbers to make and are willing looking at their fellow network operators as possible meat. oh and while i considered PSI's vision faulty, i do not believe that their peering games had anything to do with their failure. (nor do i believe that winning those games would have saved them.) now, let's resolve a point of confusion: ...at least you know they are paying SOMEBODY, thus supporting the market you want to be in. you can then compete in that market. if everybody who could peer in N places worldwide could just get peering, then all kinds of per-bit revenue for high tier network owners would turn into per-port revenue for exchange point operators. where's the market in that? how could a high tier even exist in those conditions? Argument #1, don't peer with the little guy because it takes revenue away from ISP's in general. as a local operator myself (ISC), i know that i should not expect peering other than if someone wants their customers to have better access to the f-root server or the kernel.org ftp server or whatever. it's actually easier for me, as a nonprofit, to attract what mr. bill calls 'content peering' relationships, since i don't compete with the folks i peer with. Argument #2, it's easy for me, a little guy to get peering because I don't compete with the ISP's, I just buy from them. So which is it? Do you peer with the little guys who don't run networks because content peering is good, or do you not peer with them because it forces them to buy from somebody, and if everyone does that it's good for ISP's in general? as a business decision, peering with someone like ISC is a no-op. it neither costs nor makes any money, doesn't shift cost or revenue toward anybody, etc. the two reasons for this are (a) the potential peer is not going to be selling transit (therefore there's no revenue stream to want a cut of) and (b) the potential peer isn't making any porno or other revenue, and so is an unlikely transit customer for its own traffic. It seems to me you want to have your cake and eat it too. actually i'm trying to explain rather than defend. my arm is still cramped from signing 500 peering agreements at a time back at AS6461, and when i next run an international IP backbone i hope to sign 10X as many. peering is good for business, but only if one has no natural monopoly or first mover advantage (like uunet had) that makes alternatives viable, and only if one's vision extends beyond the next quarterly SEC filing.
Re: AOL Cogent
Is it just me or does all this make Internap's Business model look really good? i think it's just you.
Re: AOL Cogent
On Mon, 2002-12-30 at 06:37, Basil Kruglov wrote: For my not-so-bright customers I simply want traceroutes to look good when they run one from Level3-homed site. Obviously a ~5-7 hops to us looks really disturbing, try to explain to one of them that there is no problem. After some off-list discussion I think I understand the issue. You do not want customers who are doing a traceroute from Level3 or one of their downstreams to see high latency on some of their traceroute hops going toward you, because you cannot control the egress path of those ttl_exceeded packets from cogent's network, even though you can control your own egress. So the obvious solution is to prepend your advertisements toward cogent, which will cause them to carry less of your inbound traffic. This has a negative impact for cogent, because they need that inbound traffic to justify some of their peering agreements (think, ratios). Supposedly this is the reason they couldn't keep the ATDN peering, eh? If all their web host-type customers suddenly start prepending advertisements, it will cause them to bleed inbound traffic. If you want to encourage cogent to build a rich community set so you can prepend only toward Level3, perhaps you should start prepending toward cogent and make the point with your cogent rep that this is going to cause them to lose your inbound traffic, and if they gave you more control over route advertisements, it would not have such an impact. On the other hand, maybe cogent doesn't want web hosts as customers. :-) -- Jeff S Wheeler [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: AOL Cogent
JSW Date: 30 Dec 2002 13:59:40 -0500 JSW From: Jeff S Wheeler JSW So the obvious solution is to prepend your advertisements JSW toward cogent, which will cause them to carry less of your JSW inbound traffic. ...although the exact effects depend on your particular mix of upstreams. LOCAL_PREF trumps AS_PATH... I severely de-pref long paths, thus [hopefully] giving those who prepend their desired result. A side benefit is this often catches long-pathed improper redistributions. I know I'm not alone in this. And one usually can adjust LOCAL_PREF via community advertised to an upstream. IOW: YMMV (YMWV if using no more than prepends) Eddy -- Brotsman Dreger, Inc. - EverQuick Internet Division Bandwidth, consulting, e-commerce, hosting, and network building Phone: +1 (785) 865-5885 Lawrence and [inter]national Phone: +1 (316) 794-8922 Wichita ~ Date: Mon, 21 May 2001 11:23:58 + (GMT) From: A Trap [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Please ignore this portion of my mail signature. These last few lines are a trap for address-harvesting spambots. Do NOT send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], or you are likely to be blocked.
Re: AOL Cogent
On 30 Dec 2002, Jeff S Wheeler wrote: On Mon, 2002-12-30 at 06:37, Basil Kruglov wrote: For my not-so-bright customers I simply want traceroutes to look good when they run one from Level3-homed site. Obviously a ~5-7 hops to us looks really disturbing, try to explain to one of them that there is no problem. After some off-list discussion I think I understand the issue. You do not want customers who are doing a traceroute from Level3 or one of their downstreams to see high latency on some of their traceroute hops going toward you, because you cannot control the egress path of those ttl_exceeded packets from cogent's network, even though you can control your own egress. So the obvious solution is to prepend your advertisements toward cogent, which will cause them to carry less of your inbound traffic. This has a negative impact for cogent, because they need that inbound traffic to justify some of their peering agreements (think, ratios). Supposedly this is the reason they couldn't keep the ATDN peering, eh? If all their web host-type customers suddenly start prepending advertisements, it will cause them to bleed inbound traffic. This doesnt work well for two reasons. One is that as path is fairly low down on the path selection and easily overridden by other factors eg localpref The other is that if the network is providing transit then you want to avoid prepending as you will most likely reduce your transit revenue. Steve If you want to encourage cogent to build a rich community set so you can prepend only toward Level3, perhaps you should start prepending toward cogent and make the point with your cogent rep that this is going to cause them to lose your inbound traffic, and if they gave you more control over route advertisements, it would not have such an impact. On the other hand, maybe cogent doesn't want web hosts as customers. :-) -- Jeff S Wheeler [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: AOL Cogent
On Mon, 30 Dec 2002, Leo Bicknell wrote: In a message written on Sun, Dec 29, 2002 at 10:32:25PM +, Paul Vixie wrote: there we go again, talking technology and making the technological kind of sense. peering isn't a technology decision, it's a business decision. This depends on how you define business decision. I view a business decision as one where a company selling a product gets to make choices about that product - but, and this is a big part - remains in business. Having the product work in the first place is a business requirement. I don't buy into the logic that making a (known) broken product is a business decision, as no one makes a business decision with a known, up-front outcome of failure. Which is my thought exactly. Surely a business decision around a technological product must make technological sense before it can make business sense else as you say what you sell is a broken product. Technology says you should make sure you have good connectivity on the major arteries of your network .. if that doesnt make business sense then you're business model is wrong! Looking for sales is fine but if it goes against the founding technological and business model then its not going to happen! Steve A business decision is something like choosing to put cheap plastic trim in a car and sell it cheap, or the best Italian leather and sell it for a lot of money. Building a car that doesn't break down every 10 miles and needs to be towed back to the garage isn't a business decision, it's a requirement to be in the car business at all. Similarly to peering, a base amount is required to make this crazy thing we all run work. As we've seen with companies like PSI, those who terminate, or loose significant peering generally end up dead. So there are really two things to talk about. From a technological point of view what's the minimum amount of peering necessary to make things work, and then from a business perspective what further optimizations can be made to make your customers more happy, or reduce your costs, or both. Trying to make it all a business decision is as wrong as trying to make it all about technology. Looking at only one side gives you have the picture. In a message written on Sun, Dec 29, 2002 at 09:12:16PM +, Paul Vixie wrote: ...at least you know they are paying SOMEBODY, thus supporting the market you want to be in. you can then compete in that market. if everybody who could peer in N places worldwide could just get peering, then all kinds of per-bit revenue for high tier network owners would turn into per-port revenue for exchange point operators. where's the market in that? how could a high tier even exist in those conditions? Argument #1, don't peer with the little guy because it takes revenue away from ISP's in general. In a message written on Sun, Dec 29, 2002 at 10:32:25PM +, Paul Vixie wrote: as a local operator myself (ISC), i know that i should not expect peering other than if someone wants their customers to have better access to the f-root server or the kernel.org ftp server or whatever. it's actually easier for me, as a nonprofit, to attract what mr. bill calls 'content peering' relationships, since i don't compete with the folks i peer with. Argument #2, it's easy for me, a little guy to get peering because I don't compete with the ISP's, I just buy from them. So which is it? Do you peer with the little guys who don't run networks because content peering is good, or do you not peer with them because it forces them to buy from somebody, and if everyone does that it's good for ISP's in general? It seems to me you want to have your cake and eat it too.
Re: AOL Cogent
Basil, If you recall, we talked about purchasing cogent access from you quite some time ago, as Five Elements is also in the Switch Data facility. If you need somewhere to off-load your AOL-bound traffic, we have some excess Aleron transit, and they have AOL peering of some sort right in Chicago. As we have excess capacity right now we could do it for a cost that would be similar to your cogent cost on a month-to-month basis, provided it does not exceed 40Mb/sec or so, and we'll let you know when our excess starts to run out and we start to incur cost on it. Most likely, by that time the Cogent/AOL issue will be resolved anyway, but it protects us from getting into a long-term deal selling below cost, while allowing you to improve network performance while maintaining your current cost structure as long as we have excess that we have to pay for, anyway. I'm not trying to pitch you, just help out :-) Here is a traceroute from the router we could put you on. I have a free 100baseT port, or we could put you on a switch if you don't mind. [EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ traceroute -q1 www.atdn.net # us in switch data traceroute to atdn.net (64.12.181.62) from 199.166.200.16, 30 hops max, 38 byte packets 1 gige2.mr0.chcgil2.ings.com (199.166.200.2) 0.341 ms # us in equinix 2 ge3-7.as.eqxchiil.aleron.net (205.198.16.141) 0.403 ms 3 ge6-2.ar.eqxchiil.aleron.net (205.198.16.41) 0.365 ms 4 66.185.141.105 (66.185.141.105) 23.778 ms # first AOL TDN hop 5 66.185.148.66 (66.185.148.66) 24.009 ms 6 bb2-vie-P10-0.atdn.net (66.185.152.215) 24.041 ms 7 bb2-rtc-P0-2.atdn.net (66.185.152.116) 24.110 ms 8 bb2-mtc-P8-0.atdn.net (66.185.152.100) 24.661 ms 9 pop1-mtc-P12-0.atdn.net (66.185.143.195) 24.810 ms 10 ow1-mc1-so-0-0-0.atdn.net (66.185.143.202) 24.839 ms 11 172.20.148.22 (172.20.148.22) 25.150 ms 12 172.20.148.22 (172.20.148.22) 25.048 ms !A I hope you don't mind my inquiry. Drop us a line if you think we can help provide a stop-gap measure for the Cogent/AOL thing, or whatnot. -- Jeff S Wheeler [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Sat, 2002-12-28 at 21:24, Basil Kruglov wrote: Speaking of this whole Cogent/AOL/Level3 mess.. sigh. I got tired of trying getting anything out of Cogent. So, here's list of questions perhaps someone might be able to answer. 1. I'm sure some of you are customers of Level3, and I'm sure you do see 1-2 sec latency w/ Cogent, what's the official Level3 'position' if/when you contact them? Do they have any plans upgrading capacity with Cogent, what's their side of this story in general? 2. I think I asked this before, why wouldn't Cogent prepend customer prefixes to Level3 or set BGP4 community for multihomed sites, homed w/ Cogent + someone else. (This is to control inbound, and please don't go into this is not-standard and Cogent won't do it.) 3. Did anyone suggested to Cogent to carry traffic (or some portion of it) to AOL via MFN to offload its Level3 peering? I couldn't get any straight answer from Cogent why this can't be done. 4. And another interesting perspective... I'm sure NDAs on peering are involved, but anyhow -some of us don't really care about AOL that much, assuming it is only outbound from Cogent into AOL (via Level3) that is saturated, Cogent may try to push traffic as: 16631_174_3356_ excluding AOL' ASN(s) at one peering location and keep saturating its Level3 peering connectivity at other locations. Any thoughts? -Basil
Re: AOL Cogent
The perceived money on the table frequently doesn't exist and attempts to get it may produce the opposite result. well, yeah, sure, but... * Who they shift the traffic to may be your competitor. ...at least you know they are paying SOMEBODY, thus supporting the market you want to be in. you can then compete in that market. if everybody who could peer in N places worldwide could just get peering, then all kinds of per-bit revenue for high tier network owners would turn into per-port revenue for exchange point operators. where's the market in that? how could a high tier even exist in those conditions? If you assume the above three cases are costs and you add that to the cost of the decreased efficiency of traffic to the target network you can compare it to the probability that you can sell service to the former peer. Depending on the relationship, you can guess the likelyhood. well, that's a technical consideration, and as such won't matter until we've burned through some of the overcapacity from the dot-bomb era. right now it's possible to do gaming and voip and other isochronous applications via a transit provider who can backhaul your traffic 1500 miles (or 6000 miles) to some centralised peering point and still have reasonable performance. we will need to 1000X the traffic volume again before this stops working again. which should take about a year.
Re: AOL Cogent
On Sun, 2002-12-29 at 15:57, Jeff S Wheeler wrote: Basil, Oops. Obviously, I posted this to the list by mistake. But in any case, for those of you who are relying upon cogent pricing to make your business model work, it should be easy to figure out that at some point, you might start getting what you are paying for. If you only have one vendor that can sell you the product you need at the price you need to make your business work, you are putting all your eggs in one basket. Your investors and customers should be concerned. It's time for companies in this situation to stop complaining at cogent or AOL or the double-secret peering cabal, and start realizing that they need to make arrangements with other vendors in order to give themselves the flexibility to avoid problems such as this. Sorry for the accidental post :-) -- Jeff S Wheeler [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: AOL Cogent
On Sun, 29 Dec 2002, Paul Vixie wrote: The perceived money on the table frequently doesn't exist and attempts to get it may produce the opposite result. well, yeah, sure, but... * Who they shift the traffic to may be your competitor. ...at least you know they are paying SOMEBODY, thus supporting the market you want to be in. you can then compete in that market. if everybody who could peer in N places worldwide could just get peering, then all kinds of per-bit revenue for high tier network owners would turn into per-port revenue for exchange point operators. where's the market in that? how could a high tier even exist in those conditions? Good point about market support.. Well, I think as a local operator you can not expect to be able to peer with everyone to receive global routes but theres no reason not to exchange local routes comparable to the area your own network covers, this wont affect transit sales and wont cost you in backhaul either. Thats a slightly different perspective than assuming you can get a providers to exchange all their network with you in a settlement free bilateral. If you assume the above three cases are costs and you add that to the cost of the decreased efficiency of traffic to the target network you can compare it to the probability that you can sell service to the former peer. Depending on the relationship, you can guess the likelyhood. well, that's a technical consideration, and as such won't matter until we've burned through some of the overcapacity from the dot-bomb era. right now it's possible to do gaming and voip and other isochronous applications via a transit provider who can backhaul your traffic 1500 miles (or 6000 miles) to some centralised peering point and still have reasonable performance. we will need to 1000X the traffic volume again before this stops working again. Unfortunately I tend to agree, on the whole the internet is about web pages and email and that wont suffer from the perspective on the eyeballs.. But, hosters are very conscious about this and will move to the better connected provider, we've seen this on the CW takeover on Exodus, as Exodus closed peers the customers abandoned ship... And definitely to your gamers and possibly your VoIP folks to (depending on details) they will be very fickle on your network connectivity and the quality of local peerings is crucial to these applications, gaming is growing very quickly as more people get flat fee broadband and to a residential access provider I wouldnt underestimate how much it could hurt to increase the path to the servers by a couple of hops. Steve which should take about a year.
Re: AOL Cogent
... if everybody who could peer in N places worldwide could just get peering, then all kinds of per-bit revenue for high tier network owners would turn into per-port revenue for exchange point operators. ... Well, I think as a local operator you can not expect to be able to peer with everyone to receive global routes but theres no reason not to exchange local routes comparable to the area your own network covers, this wont affect transit sales and wont cost you in backhaul either. Thats a slightly different perspective than assuming you can get a providers to exchange all their network with you in a settlement free bilateral. there we go again, talking technology and making the technological kind of sense. peering isn't a technology decision, it's a business decision. as a local operator myself (ISC), i know that i should not expect peering other than if someone wants their customers to have better access to the f-root server or the kernel.org ftp server or whatever. it's actually easier for me, as a nonprofit, to attract what mr. bill calls 'content peering' relationships, since i don't compete with the folks i peer with. however, in a former job, i took the reins of abovenet and used a lot of mfn fiber and mfn resources (back when they had resources to use, that is) and built a network that touched down in more places with more gigawhuppas and more bit-miles and so on than about half of the current so called top tier networks had then (or indeed have now). i surrounded PSI on all sides, with a network that carried more actual traffic and had more provable headroom, and more endpoints. yet they still insisted on playing peering games. (perhaps if they'd won those games they would still exist today?) peering is not about equity, or ratios, or technology. it's about money. sadly, too many people are focusing on their share of the current market rather than on the size of the eventual market, so, short-term thinking pervades the space, and the actual customers who source and sink all this traffic don't ride a curve that looks anything like moore's law. try a thought experiment. take about $450M in vee cee money, buy up a lot of bankrupt capital and routes, hire a bunch of starving backbone engineers and sales/marketing/finance/etc people at downsized salaries, and build a network that attends about 40 major carrier interconnect locations (some internet exchanges, some carrier motels). document the hell out of it, so that when you enter peering negotiations with the current top tier networks you've got attachment A already done and audited. now ask yourself the chances of becoming defaultless and settlement free before you run out of cash. (now, does anybody still think peering is a technology issue?) And definitely to your gamers and possibly your VoIP folks to (depending on details) they will be very fickle on your network connectivity and the quality of local peerings is crucial to these applications, gaming is growing very quickly as more people get flat fee broadband and to a residential access provider I wouldnt underestimate how much it could hurt to increase the path to the servers by a couple of hops. like i said, we're living in the shadow of bankrupt overcapacity, and until we burn it off, cost per bit-mile is going to be too low to measure when compared with cost per peering edge. the next six to twelve months will favour the small number of large peering edges model. once the capital and routes are rightpriced, and transit contracts are rightpriced, and we reach some kind of equilibrium between the value and cost of traffic, then some kind of technological argument about peering might hold some sway.
Re: AOL Cogent
Well, if L3 is a transit provider, would it not make sense for them to increase the peering pipes in order to bill their customers more? I am sure there are some smiles there right now. At 20:24 -0600 12/28/02, Basil Kruglov wrote: Speaking of this whole Cogent/AOL/Level3 mess.. sigh. I got tired of trying getting anything out of Cogent. So, here's list of questions perhaps someone might be able to answer. 1. I'm sure some of you are customers of Level3, and I'm sure you do see 1-2 sec latency w/ Cogent, what's the official Level3 'position' if/when you contact them? Do they have any plans upgrading capacity with Cogent, what's their side of this story in general? 2. I think I asked this before, why wouldn't Cogent prepend customer prefixes to Level3 or set BGP4 community for multihomed sites, homed w/ Cogent + someone else. (This is to control inbound, and please don't go into this is not-standard and Cogent won't do it.) 3. Did anyone suggested to Cogent to carry traffic (or some portion of it) to AOL via MFN to offload its Level3 peering? I couldn't get any straight answer from Cogent why this can't be done. 4. And another interesting perspective... I'm sure NDAs on peering are involved, but anyhow -some of us don't really care about AOL that much, assuming it is only outbound from Cogent into AOL (via Level3) that is saturated, Cogent may try to push traffic as: 16631_174_3356_ excluding AOL' ASN(s) at one peering location and keep saturating its Level3 peering connectivity at other locations. Any thoughts? -Basil -- David Diaz [EMAIL PROTECTED] [Email] [EMAIL PROTECTED] [Pager] www.smoton.net [Peering Site under development] Smotons (Smart Photons) trump dumb photons
Re: AOL Cogent
I love that Paul can be correct in an email and still make me smile. The smile was the 1000x growth in internet traffic in a year. Paul is right, this is a business case. Since most people in the thread already make great points, I wont rehash them. I think this is a standard peering argument that you could argue going back to 1999 ISPcon panel that Bill Norton hosted. There it was UUNET with ratios and settlement. I will make the comment that I have a lot of respect for the AOL guys and Im sure there are some considerations that we are all not privy too. To bolster their argument though, unlike uunet had at the time (or now) they do have caching servers, so that helps their argument of ratio consideration. As for the business point, I always felt that peering was no place to make the money, which was not substantial anyhow, and likely short sighted. The reason is, once you agree to that dirty word settlement, someone is likely to turn around and hit you up with it. Since you now have unclean hands, it's hard for you to argue against it. You should built a better backbone and use that and whatever model you have to out-compete your competition. During these times I think it makes more sense to enhance the internet such that new technologies and uses can arise thereby driving business for us all. As Paul mentioned, peering enhances the experience for users, but most apps dont need them today, and you need to justify a business model. If one follows what happened in the computer world, we had a huge rapid growth in mips which no one could see a use for. Then the GUI came about and ever larger apps. The GUI enhanced the experience (no unix flames please). Could we not then say that an enhanced internet backbone might create the matrix for new apps or technology not able to thrive today? I am sure not many of us predicted the user to user traffic a few years ago. Eyeballs to eyeballs traffic (peer to peer networking) just did not exist, but as DSL was widely deployed apps emerged to help fill the pipes. Im sure a lot of eyeball networks were happy they did some good private peering connections to handle the initial traffic. My 2cents. David At 22:32 + 12/29/02, Paul Vixie wrote: ... if everybody who could peer in N places worldwide could just get peering, then all kinds of per-bit revenue for high tier network owners would turn into per-port revenue for exchange point operators. ... Well, I think as a local operator you can not expect to be able to peer with everyone to receive global routes but theres no reason not to exchange local routes comparable to the area your own network covers, this wont affect transit sales and wont cost you in backhaul either. Thats a slightly different perspective than assuming you can get a providers to exchange all their network with you in a settlement free bilateral. there we go again, talking technology and making the technological kind of sense. peering isn't a technology decision, it's a business decision. as a local operator myself (ISC), i know that i should not expect peering other than if someone wants their customers to have better access to the f-root server or the kernel.org ftp server or whatever. it's actually easier for me, as a nonprofit, to attract what mr. bill calls 'content peering' relationships, since i don't compete with the folks i peer with. however, in a former job, i took the reins of abovenet and used a lot of mfn fiber and mfn resources (back when they had resources to use, that is) and built a network that touched down in more places with more gigawhuppas and more bit-miles and so on than about half of the current so called top tier networks had then (or indeed have now). i surrounded PSI on all sides, with a network that carried more actual traffic and had more provable headroom, and more endpoints. yet they still insisted on playing peering games. (perhaps if they'd won those games they would still exist today?) peering is not about equity, or ratios, or technology. it's about money. sadly, too many people are focusing on their share of the current market rather than on the size of the eventual market, so, short-term thinking pervades the space, and the actual customers who source and sink all this traffic don't ride a curve that looks anything like moore's law. try a thought experiment. take about $450M in vee cee money, buy up a lot of bankrupt capital and routes, hire a bunch of starving backbone engineers and sales/marketing/finance/etc people at downsized salaries, and build a network that attends about 40 major carrier interconnect locations (some internet exchanges, some carrier motels). document the hell out of it, so that when you enter peering negotiations with the current top tier networks you've got attachment A already done and audited. now ask yourself the chances of becoming defaultless and settlement free before you run out of cash. (now,
Re: AOL Cogent
On Sun, Dec 29, 2002 at 09:12:16PM +, Paul Vixie wrote: per-bit revenue for high tier network owners would turn into per-port revenue for exchange point operators. where's the market in that? how I think you just answered your own question. Exchange point operations. could a high tier even exist in those conditions? I think its a difficult market to exist in anyway. It may be that networks can make revenue on characteristics of their network other than simply bps. The quality (read: latency, loss factor, transparency/or-not, connectedness) and services (read: various types of servers such as for games, voice/multimedia gateways, storage, flexibility - perhaps deliver service further than the smartjack?) may be what differeniates one from another. This doesn't seem to be happening though and I'm not sure how likely it will be. If the market is soley about the number of bits, soon this might not be an attractive market for a lot of providers to be in. If there are a lot of suppliers and the ease of changing suppliers is simple (good reason for you to want to get rid of NAT :-), the market will be commoditized with consumers simply moving their connections around to Cogent-like providers on a month-to-month basis. This assumes most suppliers provide a reasonable level of quality, which most probably do. If there are only a few suppliers (oligopoly?), little choice and strong barriers to entry, it might be a much more attractive market to be in. As a customer, I'd like to see the former more than the latter. Perhaps then the services above would be more forthcoming? John
Re: AOL Cogent
On Sun, 29 Dec 2002, Paul Vixie wrote: The perceived money on the table frequently doesn't exist and attempts to get it may produce the opposite result. well, yeah, sure, but... * Who they shift the traffic to may be your competitor. ...at least you know they are paying SOMEBODY, thus supporting the market you want to be in. you can then compete in that market. if everybody who could peer in N places worldwide could just get peering, then all kinds of per-bit revenue for high tier network owners would turn into per-port revenue for exchange point operators. where's the market in that? how could a high tier even exist in those conditions? This is a straw man argument. I could just point out how it's technically wrong except that would be no fun so instead I'll give analogies first: Your argument is like saying that everybody that has taken a wood shop class in high school (or junior high) can build their own house, so home builders are going to be out of business. Or how about... Since everybody that has a truck can drive a package from San Jose to New York, Federal Express and United Parcel Service are no longer needed. Or most mundane yet... Everybody knows how to make sandwitches so there aren't going to be any kind large sandwitch chains, let alone multinational corporations that serve food. Seriously... Networks cost money to build and operate. Geography, both physical and political, provide for varying costs over different routes. The majority of large networks don't have the exact same routers in the exact same places connected with the exact same circuits. Operational costs, capital costs, customer service attitudes, and policies are different between companies. All of these features define the specific value added of a network. Economic pressure and the underlying technology determine how many companies can exist. Even if there were low barriers to entry, it doesn't mean that there won't be cases where it makes perfectly reasonable sense to some networks to outsource part of their infrastructure needs. This might be as simple as coverage for a specific market or backup capacity. we will need to 1000X the traffic volume again before this stops working again. which should take about a year. Heh. That should be interesting. :) In the long run capacity is likely to be capable of expanding at the rate of moores law. Desired bandwidth per end user appears to increase in a nonlinear manner at the introduction of new protocols (i.e. HTTP, Kazaa). If we have enough of these nonlinear transitions we might even someday be able to make a moores law equivalent for end user bandwidth demand (the chip industry has a few more years on us to be able to make empirical conclusions regarding industry constants). Then you could compare the curve of the end user bandwidth demand law to the moores law curve and make interesting prognostications. To illustrate how moores law and the hypothetical end user bandwidth demand law are different, for anybody that has upgraded their personal workstation to twice the processor speed or greater, to do the exact same end user task (i.e. visit a website) the day after you upgraded did you generate twice as much bandwidth? probably not. Mike. +- H U R R I C A N E - E L E C T R I C -+ | Mike Leber Direct Internet Connections Voice 510 580 4100 | | Hurricane Electric Web Hosting Colocation Fax 510 580 4151 | | [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.he.net | +---+
Re: AOL Cogent
Well, it only took the press 9 days to get a story out, I guess that isn't all bad. The Washington Post now has a story on this issue: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A45819-2002Dec27.html It claims AOL wants $75000/month. If we use the $50/meg Andrew Partan posted that would be an even 1.5 Gig, which is an entirely plausible number for the traffic level (given previous rumor of 2xOC-12, eg 1.2 Gig, recently upgraded to 2xOC-48). I'll offer two comments from my own opinion: - Peering should cost significantly less than transit. At least half, probably less. If you have 1.5 Gig, getting $50 a meg transit is trivial today. I can't imagine any company paying $50 a meg for peering, no matter what the circumstances. Perhaps that was the point though. - In my opinion, if you want to enforce a ratio and charge people who do not meet it, the charge should only be on the difference. That is, say it was 1500 Mbps Cogent-AOL, and 500Mbps AOL-Cogent. The first 1000 Mbps (2x500, 2:1 ratio), Cogent-AOL should be free, as they would be if there was less traffic. Charging for the extra 500, while not something I advocate, would be fair. To make it such that 1000Mbps would be free, but 1001 Mbps means to pay for the first 1000 is just stupid. People don't generally accept pricing models that have large jumps in them, they want something progressive. I wonder what Cogent's response would have been if the charge was only for the amount over 2:1, and was a reasonable price for peering, perhaps $15/Meg and AOL gets to pick the locations -- Leo Bicknell - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - CCIE 3440 PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/ Read TMBG List - [EMAIL PROTECTED], www.tmbg.org msg07613/pgp0.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: AOL Cogent
On Sat, Dec 28, 2002 at 04:43:18PM -0500, Leo Bicknell wrote: - Peering should cost significantly less than transit. At least half, probably less. If you have 1.5 Gig, getting $50 a meg transit is trivial today. I can't imagine any company paying $50 a meg for peering, no matter what the circumstances. I'll make one issue about that blanket statement of the price of peering. Consider this example: If I buy 100Mbit of transit from AboveNet in IAD, odds are you're gonna peer off 75% of my traffic locally, without it ever having touched expensive longhaul circuits. If I buy 100Mbit of paid peering, odds are you're going to be burning longhaul circuits carrying most of it all over the world, plus the same longhaul carrying it all back to me. Depending on your situation, your transport costs per meg could easily end up exceeding the price you charge for transit, and even more so for what you would want to charge to peering. Now based on the price you're charging the customer on the other end, it might still be worth it. But forgetting about some of your huge costs just because you've already paid them and you don't have to worry about it until you need to upgrade is dangerous, and leads to situations like the ones many service providers are facing today. There is also a big distinction between what I would call paid peering, and on-net transit. Many of the people I see inquiring about paid peering are one-location wonders looking to lower their transit cost by buying peering with everyone. This is significantly different from someone who is in diverse locations, but just needs a little extra to make the deal worth it. This might mean one side paying for the loops, or as you suggested paying for usage over a ratio, or otherwise some price which is less than transit. Perhaps that was the point though. At this point, I'm inclined to believe AOL is simply flexing their newfound peering pecker on someone they perceive to be in a weak position. But who knows, maybe AOL thinks they can make more money by helping drive Cogent out of business, and inflate the price of transit again. :) Everyone has their own theory about how much to charge and who to charge it too. Only time will tell who has it right. -- Richard A Steenbergen [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.e-gerbil.net/ras GPG Key ID: 0xF8B12CBC (7535 7F59 8204 ED1F CC1C 53AF 4C41 5ECA F8B1 2CBC)
Re: AOL Cogent
In a message written on Sat, Dec 28, 2002 at 05:52:30PM -0500, Richard A Steenbergen wrote: - Peering should cost significantly less than transit. At least half, probably less. If you have 1.5 Gig, getting $50 a meg transit is trivial today. I can't imagine any company paying $50 a meg for peering, no matter what the circumstances. I'll make one issue about that blanket statement of the price of peering. [issue deleted] Your analysis is not completely wrong when considering only settlement free peering, or only transit. I was intending to address the middle case, a settlement based peer. I'm also assuming these people are close to a settlement free peer. That is, if you allow a 2:1 peer, and someone comes in at 1001:500 Mbps, charging them the same as the transit price for either the full 1001 (which I contend is amazingly foolish), or just for the 1 (something I could live with, in some situations) doesn't make sense. You're trying to even out a perceived inequity, and I will argue strongly that the cost of moving an extra meg across an existing peering circuit is _far_ less than moving a transit meg. All in all, I find ratios an extremely poor way of validating a peer. I can think of many cases where it is in both parties interest to peer, but where the traffic might be extremely unbalanced. Yes, the fact that it is unbalanced can shift costs from one provider to another, and that's a very real problem to solve. The correct way to solve it is not to force a transit model though, but to use careful circuit provisioning and various technical tools to move the cost back to something more equal. Heck, even a settlement, much as I hate them, would be better than just turning the thing off. What's even funnier is that most people apply them equally in both directions. They want to make the claim that being out of ratio (such as in this case) shifts costs onto their network. Well, many people do the same thing in reverse. If they saw a 1:3 they would not peer with someone /even though they are shifting cost to the other party/. I've never understood how someone can argue that a ratio is about protecting their company from bearing a disproportionate amount of the cost, and then also prevent their company from shifting that cost to someone else (assuming the other party would agree). -- Leo Bicknell - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - CCIE 3440 PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/ Read TMBG List - [EMAIL PROTECTED], www.tmbg.org msg07615/pgp0.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: AOL Cogent
On Sat, 28 Dec 2002 18:34:01 -0500, Leo Bicknell wrote: All in all, I find ratios an extremely poor way of validating a peer. I can think of many cases where it is in both parties interest to peer, but where the traffic might be extremely unbalanced. Yes, the fact that it is unbalanced can shift costs from one provider to another, and that's a very real problem to solve. The correct way to solve it is not to force a transit model though, but to use careful circuit provisioning and various technical tools to move the cost back to something more equal. Heck, even a settlement, much as I hate them, would be better than just turning the thing off. When Cogent cut off their peering with AOL, AOL customers now find that they experience lags reaching content providers that use Cogent. Also, of course, Cogent customers find that AOL's customers have trouble reaching their content. I submit, however, that the pain is suffered more nearly equally. Assume for the moment that AOL is very large and all eyeballs and Cogent is very small and all content. The argument would likely be made that poor connectivity between Cogent and AOL hurts Cogent more as a significant number of people can't reach their customer's sites well. But I submit that while the harm is lesser to each AOL customer (since only a small fraction of the sites they might wish to reach are congested), there are more AOL customers. The aggregate harm or benefit would be expected to be nearly the same. After all, each delayed or dropped packet harms one customer of each company. In general, however, eyeballs are more sensitive to delays. If I get a slow page load of a Microsoft site, Microsoft isn't harmed as much by that one delay as I am. So the aggregate benefit to AOL's customers would be expected to be greater than that to Cogent's. What's even funnier is that most people apply them equally in both directions. They want to make the claim that being out of ratio (such as in this case) shifts costs onto their network. Well, many people do the same thing in reverse. If they saw a 1:3 they would not peer with someone /even though they are shifting cost to the other party/. I've never understood how someone can argue that a ratio is about protecting their company from bearing a disproportionate amount of the cost, and then also prevent their company from shifting that cost to someone else (assuming the other party would agree). Well the pipes and routers go both ways at the same speed. So the aggregate cost to set up, say, an OC12 peering connection is best utilized if the OC12 is nearly maxed both ways. It's not wholly unreasonable to say that if you're going to go through the cost of setting up a peering connection at a particular speed, you want to move as much total traffic over it as possible. But, as I'm sure we all know, this whole charade is just about dreaming up a way to charge someone money. Currently, traffic between Cogent and AOL seems to be experiencing delays of under one second each way. There is no packet loss. The situation is quite tolerable though, of course, it could be better. Also, one philosophical point that I think is especially important for network operators to keep in mind. The usual definition of the 'Internet' has IP in it somewhere. While this may be what currently defines the Internet, the protocol could change entirely and it would still be the Internet. The Internet is a philosophy and what that philosophy has brought into being. The philosophy is about making a genuine best effort to intercommunicate with anyone else who makes a similar effort. An Internet product is one that reflects this philosophy, not one that happens to work over today's Internet. An Internet company is one that operates under this philosophy, not one that happens to own routers, pipes, or pass IP traffic. DS
Re: AOL Cogent
Speaking of this whole Cogent/AOL/Level3 mess.. sigh. I got tired of trying getting anything out of Cogent. So, here's list of questions perhaps someone might be able to answer. 1. I'm sure some of you are customers of Level3, and I'm sure you do see 1-2 sec latency w/ Cogent, what's the official Level3 'position' if/when you contact them? Do they have any plans upgrading capacity with Cogent, what's their side of this story in general? 2. I think I asked this before, why wouldn't Cogent prepend customer prefixes to Level3 or set BGP4 community for multihomed sites, homed w/ Cogent + someone else. (This is to control inbound, and please don't go into this is not-standard and Cogent won't do it.) 3. Did anyone suggested to Cogent to carry traffic (or some portion of it) to AOL via MFN to offload its Level3 peering? I couldn't get any straight answer from Cogent why this can't be done. 4. And another interesting perspective... I'm sure NDAs on peering are involved, but anyhow -some of us don't really care about AOL that much, assuming it is only outbound from Cogent into AOL (via Level3) that is saturated, Cogent may try to push traffic as: 16631_174_3356_ excluding AOL' ASN(s) at one peering location and keep saturating its Level3 peering connectivity at other locations. Any thoughts? -Basil
Re: AOL Cogent
On Sat, Dec 28, 2002 at 08:24:16PM -0600, Basil Kruglov wrote: 2. I think I asked this before, why wouldn't Cogent prepend customer prefixes to Level3 or set BGP4 community for multihomed sites, homed w/ Cogent + someone else. You got your answer to this before, what part wasn't clear? Cogent isn't congested in the inbound direction, only outbound to Level 3. The best they could do is lower their localpref for 3356, which I would surely hope they have done already. -- Richard A Steenbergen [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.e-gerbil.net/ras GPG Key ID: 0xF8B12CBC (7535 7F59 8204 ED1F CC1C 53AF 4C41 5ECA F8B1 2CBC)
Re: AOL Cogent
On Sat, 28 Dec 2002, Richard A Steenbergen wrote: Consider this example: If I buy 100Mbit of transit from AboveNet in IAD, odds are you're gonna peer off 75% of my traffic locally, without it ever having touched expensive longhaul circuits. If I buy 100Mbit of paid peering, odds are you're going to be burning longhaul circuits carrying most of it all over the world, plus the same longhaul carrying it all back to me. So are any ISPs pricing transit and/or paid-peering bandwidth (significantly) lower if purchased at an exchange point? Pete.
Re: AOL Cogent
... trying to even out a perceived inequity ... peering is a business decision. if it's possible to force another network into the role of customer, then that's seen by many as good business since revenue increases. paid peering or even settlements are not about inequity, perceived or otherwise; rather, it's about not leaving money on the table. -- Paul Vixie
Re: AOL Cogent
Old rules, modern peering decisions arent made with such common sense ideas in mind but based on power play and a desire for everyone to be your customer! Because investing in building a network is expensive and with the push to reduce transit costs the revenue gap has to be made up somewhere else.
RE: AOL Cogent
That's actually an interesting thought. From AOLs perspective it mght be cheaper to buy transit from L3 then peering with so many people especialy privately. Ports do cost money. From the business perspective I think Bill Norton has shown that sometimes transit might be more attractive then peering, depending on several factors. I doubt L3 will increase their peering, they are in a very strict mode right now. One factor that was brought up privately by someone with cogent experience is perception is reality. Something I was fond of saying at AS4006. It seems a dangerous slippery slope, once you are on the ropes and a big peer drops you, does it not set the stage for others to quickly do so also? As part of that I would also not quickly discount the human factor. Let's face it there are not that many people that have been doing peering for awhile, it's a small friendly group. I do find there does seem to be a strange undercurrent flowing against cogent. A cogent thread seems to pop up every couple of months, and in the space talking to people they seem to bear the brunt of rough comments. Wonder if that is because of the pricing pressure they are bringing at $30meg, or it its a different perception of acheiving tier1 easily etc just thinking outloud. David At 21:44 -0500 12/20/02, Ringdahl, Dwight (WebUseNet) wrote: If I were Level3, I'd give them (cogent) a bigger peering pipe, and take the money from the larger, more stable company AOL... Might not be common peering sense, but damn good business sense Further, if L3/Cogent are settlement-free and both parties are interested in growing the size of their peering connections, wouldn't it make better sense -- David Diaz [EMAIL PROTECTED] [Email] [EMAIL PROTECTED] [Pager] www.smoton.net [Peering Site under development] Smotons (Smart Photons) trump dumb photons
RE: AOL Cogent
Further, if L3/Cogent are settlement-free and both parties are interested in growing the size of their peering connections, wouldn't it make better sense for Cogent all-around? If AOL is not interested in settlement-free peering with them, then AOL can pay to get to them. I seem to remember some old rule of thumb that basically said anyone who peers with your upstream/transit provider is probably makes sense for you to peer with (because you are otherwise paying to reach them). I thought *THAT* was the point of peering vs transit for networks that are not transit-free. Deepak Jain AiNET -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Andrew Partan Sent: Thursday, December 19, 2002 2:47 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: AOL Cogent I was poking around to see what was happening with Cogent and AOL and ran into some interesting info. The test that Cogent failed was a 2:1 ratio; Cogent was at 3:1 and AOL insisted they be at no more than 2:1 for free peering. AOL wants Cogent to pay for peering - the pricing I've heard is $50-/meg for paid peering - which I think is more than street price for transit... Hmm; I wonder if this change in policy has anything to do with John Schanz's recent move from Sprint to AOL? --asp
RE: AOL Cogent
Old rules, modern peering decisions arent made with such common sense ideas in mind but based on power play and a desire for everyone to be your customer! Connectivity, resilience, even commercial saving all seem to be increasingly moved to be on a back burner for many peering managers! I have this at the moment with an operator, we host content their access customers use and have requested improved connectivity to, I see this provider via mutual transit.. they wont peer. Your analysis of the AOL/Cogent situation suggests we're not fully aware of the facts, either that or they really are stupid! Steve On Fri, 20 Dec 2002, Deepak Jain wrote: Further, if L3/Cogent are settlement-free and both parties are interested in growing the size of their peering connections, wouldn't it make better sense for Cogent all-around? If AOL is not interested in settlement-free peering with them, then AOL can pay to get to them. I seem to remember some old rule of thumb that basically said anyone who peers with your upstream/transit provider is probably makes sense for you to peer with (because you are otherwise paying to reach them). I thought *THAT* was the point of peering vs transit for networks that are not transit-free. Deepak Jain AiNET -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Andrew Partan Sent: Thursday, December 19, 2002 2:47 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: AOL Cogent I was poking around to see what was happening with Cogent and AOL and ran into some interesting info. The test that Cogent failed was a 2:1 ratio; Cogent was at 3:1 and AOL insisted they be at no more than 2:1 for free peering. AOL wants Cogent to pay for peering - the pricing I've heard is $50-/meg for paid peering - which I think is more than street price for transit... Hmm; I wonder if this change in policy has anything to do with John Schanz's recent move from Sprint to AOL? --asp
RE: AOL Cogent
If I were Level3, I'd give them (cogent) a bigger peering pipe, and take the money from the larger, more stable company AOL... Might not be common peering sense, but damn good business sense Further, if L3/Cogent are settlement-free and both parties are interested in growing the size of their peering connections, wouldn't it make better sense
