Carl, Although MFS is a great source of answers for 1, 2 and 3. They are not a good source for 4 & 5. Since the goal of MFS at the Mae's (and rightfully so) is to make money, they will convince you that it will be a good choice. However, if you are a regional ISP, you can't get peering with most of the big NSPs without having a national network, and then even that may not be enough. Sprint's public policy that 3 DS3s, 24X7 NOC and DS3 backbone suffices for peering, but they have stopped all new peering until the end of summer, leaving Exodus, Compuserve and a few other large networks transitting through CIX and upstream providers. I believe that MCI Internet, ANS, UUNet and a few others have this policy, but will peer if you meet the minimum requirements. Since those networks together are probably 60% or greater of the routes on the Internet, how much of a use will this connection really be. Of course shortest-path out makes great theoretical policy. Why would you, as a local ISP, want your customer's traffic to be backhauled all the way to D.C. and back, just to get to someone down the street. What you'll have to do is weigh the high costs with the small benefit you will derive from joining Mae-West. http://www.mfs.net/MAE has all the current connections on the maes. I'd suggest reading it through and contacting a few of the ISPs and NSPs, gathering their policies and studying the benefits before making a very serious jump. Or at least look into spending a bunch of additional money buying transit services from AGIS or CRL. They both are in the business of servicing ISPs at the IXP level. Both with their own advantages and disadvantages. Robert Bowman Exodus Communications Inc.
Could some kind network operator out there, guide me to a FAQ or some other document with regards to interconnecting at MAE-West (or any other MAE). Specifically, some of the things I would like to find out about are probably old hat to most of you, so if you could pass on some of your knowledge, it would be greatly appreciated.
Some of the specifics:
1) Requirements for interconnect at MAE-West 2) Cost? 3) Minimum Line Speed 4) Transit? i.e. if the line is for backup purposes only, how can we arrange for transit, etc... 5) Peering agreements etc.
So if there is a document or set of documents that have this info in them, if someone could point me in the right direction, I'd surely appreciate it.
-Carl Forsythe carlf@mbay.net
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