Depending on transport costs, it may be cheaper to just use HE at a datacenter he's already in vs going to a datacenter he's not in currently.

HE has 10G of transit for as low as $900 right now. If 10G of transport from him to an IX is more than that, there's no financial incentive to peer instead of buy more transit. Since HE peers with everyone on most IX's, he is essentially paying HE for full routes plus peering to the same IX he would go to anyway. It's lower cost and you kill two birds with one stone. I understand the desire to have your own connection to an IX but having HE in the mix is basically like peering direct since they're everywhere in nearly every IX. The other upside is you don't need to waste time trying to establish bilateral peering sessions with providers who don't peer with the route servers. 

On Wed, Oct 14, 2020, 8:09 AM Michael Spears <michael@spears.io> wrote:

Yep. Get on some IXes first. You’d be able to offload a ton of traffic to free peering, vs sending everything via the transit you pay for.

 

From: NANOG <nanog-bounces+michael=spears.io@nanog.org> On Behalf Of Mike Hammett
Sent: Tuesday, October 13, 2020 8:20 PM
To: Aaron Gould <aaron1@gvtc.com>
Cc: nanog@nanog.org
Subject: Re: Hurricane Electric AS6939

 

https://bgp.he.net/AS16527

 

You don't appear to be on any IXes. Definitely join some IXes before buying another 100G of transit.

 

DFW has a couple and there are some more that are starting up.

 

From: "Aaron Gould" <aaron1@gvtc.com>
To: nanog@nanog.org
Sent: Tuesday, October 13, 2020 6:29:55 PM
Subject: Hurricane Electric AS6939

Do y’all like HE for Internet uplink?  I’m thinking about using them for 100gig in Texas.  It would be for my eyeballs ISP.  We currently have Spectrum, Telia and Cogent.

-Aaron