""Howard C. Berkowitz"" wrote in message ... > *sigh* you realize, I know, that we are talking about utterly > essential concepts in working in the ISP space, yet these are things > that don't show up on any Cisco test I'm aware of. This is part of > why an R&S CCIE isn't much initial use to a large ISP without a good > deal of OJT -- although they can probably deal with customer > connections.
Actually, they do show up on Cisco tests that I'm aware of, but I doubt I can disclose the detail of that information, especially here. Also - I see it as the other way around... ISP's and whoever are still going to take CCIE's over people with actual ISP "OJT" or even 10+ years experience. Why? Because Cisco's a monopoly and just too dominant. Worldcom and Level-3 will never have such success. > >the problem is that everybody pays Sprint (at least according to > >Sprint), but the people who "might not pay Sprint, but shhh don't > >tell anyone" (aka AOL) probably pay Worldcom. > > Well, probably a couple more. Think of who actually runs substantial > national backbones of OC-48 or better. Sprint, AT&T, > Worldcom/UUNET/whatever name du jour. There are some other major > regional facility providers, including the Borgs...I mean, former > Baby Bells. Now, it's perfectly reasonable that a Tier 1 could > outsource the transmission, especially since they have the level of > clue to write enforceable physical diversity requirements. The physical diversity requirements are enough for an average MBA graduate to figure out how to finance.... dime a dozen. If you want to and can sell it, you'll find a way to get into it (but not necessarily out). Anybody can play with the big boys, especially if you have Warren Buffett (Level-3) or Carl Icahn (XO) behind your company. These people are also a dime a dozen in the high-end business world. > >Speaking of AOL, > >where do they fit? Tier 1, 2, or 3? They don't have enterprise IP > >transit customers... they aren't really a transit-AS.... but they > >are arguably larger than most ISP's that consider themselves > >Tier-1's. Same with MSN. > > I don't know that much about their internals, so I'm making an > educated guess here. My recollection is that they outsource > substantial parts of their transit requirements. They outsource plenty of their transit requirements... but they charge more than standard transit prices for their sub-1k routes. Explain this. > Frankly, I'd call them much closer to an ASP than an ISP. oh the blurry lines... this is very true ;> I very much agree with you on this point. > If you want to go this route, than we really need to introduce > categories beyond ISP. You have major access providers/broadband > aggregators/dial wholesalers. You have application service providers, > which blurs with content provider. For that matter, you have > wholesale content delivery providers like Akamai. Again, agreed. Unfortunately, many of the people driving business behind "the ISP indsutry" were previously using the "Voice" model and selling like a traditional telco. Clearly, the retail industry and especially energy/defense industries are way ahead of the telco industry selling/mktg/general business strategies and models. So it's another repeat of a sad story.... the ISP industry could end up just like the telco industry... or worse, the automotive or consulting industries. > >The most important provider for most business today is not any of > >the above types, surprisingly. It's the pen-ultimate Tier-1... > >the Exchange Point Provider. There has to be someplace where all > >these people meet to exchange traffic and connect with circuits... > >and in today's world... it's the Exchange Point. > > Yes and no. Now, most details are proprietary, but my impression is > that more pure bandwidth is exchanged between "high-level" provider > through direct private peering connections (private lines or > equivalents) than through exchange point fabrics. Confusing this And the cost of a 10/100 interface or two, or even sixty, is....? > even further is the presence of private peerings both between the > cages/racks in an exchange point (a piece of fiber), and the less > visible private peerings that take place in the exchange point > building but not in the exchange point proper (i.e., fiber > connections down in the cable vault). Or cheap $20/month copper cross-connects. To everyone else in the facility. > There's a delicate economic balance whether bilateral/multilateral > peering at exchanges gives you enough routes, and also enough > economic fairness. Bill Norton has published rather extensively on > this topic, and presented at multiple NANOGs. Well it really comes down to returns... and the WACC/discount/ hurdle rates your company employs and how they measure when the company goes into big capital or operating expenditures. Unless you run your own business and can do whatever you want. There's always power in the normally powerless (Tier-5) and powerlessness in the typically powerful (Tier-1). > The reality is that at some (there's no rule that applies to all) > exchange points, one provider may still buy transit from another and > peer with yet others. Different exchange points only permit peering > without financial exchange. That's not true. There's no rules to who allows peering or not by the exchanges... that's like saying the NYSE is controlled by MSDW. Well, actually, you might have a point there... but for 99% of cases, you can probably get away with enough to make returns viable regardless of exchange politics. > One incentive to greater exchange point usage may be IPv6, the > unicast address structure for which reserves top-level identifiers > for exchange points as well as major transit providers. This would > allow geographic rather than carrier-based aggregation. But there is a lot of security, homeland protection concerns currently with geographical vs. carrier-based aggegation. Scale free network topologies built on BGP have influenced both IPv4 CIDR routing and IPv6 future routing. -dre Message Posted at: http://www.groupstudy.com/form/read.php?f=7&i=71588&t=71508 -------------------------------------------------- FAQ, list archives, and subscription info: http://www.groupstudy.com/list/cisco.html Report misconduct and Nondisclosure violations to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
