The tier nomenclature also a really good way to instigate flame fests on lists such as this. Regards Marshall On May 3, 2006, at 12:23 PM, Joe Provo wrote:
On Tue, May 02, 2006 at 10:38:22PM -0700, Robert Sherrard wrote:
What make a provider a tier 2, versus a tier 1 provider...
Marketing.
The nomenclature is a completelyy irrelevant hangover of the NSFnet days when people thought in terms of "the backbone". If your providers' value is only in specific delicate contractural relationships that can vanish with little notice, is that really a value? You should examine carriers by your needs, performance, scope, reliability [human and network], cost, etc meaningful metrics. Get reference clients and query their technical staff. Get a view into their routing table and examine adjacenies.... if *you* care about a particular adjacency, press for performace data/trends.
Joe
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