I do so wish we could get over the "tier" fixation.
If I start the Tampa Bay Internet Exchange, let's say, and I haul in OC-3 links from the 5 top backbones, and DS-3's to the 4 NAP's, I can then (very likely) a) resell bandwidth to local ISP's for quite a bit less than the backbones could sell them a local drop, which would b) be quintuply redundant in cast of feed failure, and c) unload all the cross provider traffic from the NAP's, and indeed, the backbone itself.
I'm not disagreeing with anything here but, the "tier" thing is a real concern especially for the marketing weasels at the smaller companies. The network construction is quite sound.
This worked perfectly well with Usenet topology, until the commercial wonks started screwing it up.
In fact, I could operate the exchange as a co-op, _owned_ by all the local providers.
This is the best I've heard yet. A non-profit co-op run by any interested local providers would be just a fantastic idea. The reason I brought up the whole tier issue is that if this becomes a commercial entity then it looses its effectiveness.
Except for the back bone operators, who's best interests is such a scheme _not_ it?
(And please note here: just because I _could_ oversubscribe the uplinks doesn't meant I _have_ to.)
Right..see above. Brian