We have very similar issues in Kansas City. A couple years ago we set up a local exchange point but it's had issues gaining traction due to a lack of understanding more than anything else. In these smaller markets people have a hard time understanding how connecting to a competitor benefits them. The key is to get a few solid players on board and cross your fingers that others will follow. Aaron -----Original Message----- From: Jay Hanke [mailto:jhanke@myclearwave.net] Sent: Thursday, March 04, 2010 10:33 AM To: 'Andrew Hoyos'; 'Jared Mauch'; 'Sean Donelan' Cc: nanog@nanog.org Subject: RE: Alaska IXP? On 3/4/10 8:57 AM, "Jay Hanke" <jhanke@myclearwave.net> wrote: <snip>
We've seen the same issues in Minnesota. Locally referred to as the
"Chicago
. Problem". Adding on to point 3, there is also a lack of neutral facilities with a sufficient amount of traffic to justify the next carrier connecting. In rural areas many times the two ISPs that provide services are enemies at the business level. A couple of us have started to talk about starting an exchange point. With transit being so cheap it is sometimes difficult to justify paying for the x-connects for a small piece of the routing table.
Have you considered starting your own exchange point with some of the local players? Just having the connectivity in place may help with DR situations in addition to all of the benefits of an exchange point.
Any interest by other anchor tenants in the area, such as the higher education facilities? In Madison, we have MadIX[1], an exchange point hosted by the University of Wisconsin-Madison, with a presence in one of the neutral carrier hotels in Madison.
That eliminates the carrier to carrier issues you run into in the smaller cities, also helps with the "Chicago Problem" which we are very familiar with here as well.
[1] http://kb.wisc.edu/ns/page.php?id=6636
Andrew
From the looks of the link it looks like there is a bit of traction at the MadIX. One of the other interested carriers has talked to the University of MN and they showed some interest in participating. The trick is getting the first couple of participants to get to critical mass. Is the MadIX using a route server or is it strictly layer2?
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