As Jeremy has described in detail, the problem is at OSI layer 1. Not a lack of peering exchanges such as the VANIX. There is no dark fiber route from Alaska via the Yukon to Vancouver. I know where most of the Telus (ILEC) and Northwestel (Bell) fiber is in northern BC and none of interconnects with Alaska. Network topologically all locations in Alaska which are fiber fed via the existing submarine cable routes (not on geostationary C/Ku-band satellite) are a suburb of Seattle. Imagine an island with a population of about 600,000 people located somewhere in Puget Sound with various DWDM circuits that have their other ends in the Westin Building. Various IP transit, peering, transport and IX connections at that location. Other satellite fed singlehomed locations in Alaska can be logically just about anywhere thanks to the way bent-pipe relay via geostationary transponders work. There's at least a couple of dozen large teleports in the US 48 states with 7.3m and larger C-band dishes that support two way TDMA and SCPC services into Alaska. In such case the sites are indistinguishable from very low bandwidth singlehomed FDD microwave sites which happen to have at minimum 495ms latency. On Fri, Oct 9, 2015 at 1:04 PM, Owen DeLong <owen@delong.com> wrote:
On Oct 8, 2015, at 11:24 PM, Jeremy Austin <jhaustin@gmail.com> wrote:
On Thu, Oct 8, 2015 at 3:25 PM, James Jun <james@towardex.com> wrote:
If you want choices in your transit providers, you should get a
circuit (dark, wave or EPL) to a nearby carrier hotel/data center. Once you do that, you will suddenly find that virtually almost everyone in
transport the
competitive IP transit market will provide you with dual-stacked IPv4/IPv6 service.
The future is here, but it isn't evenly distributed yet. I'm in North America, but there are no IXPs in my *state*, let alone in my *continent* -- from an undersea fiber perspective. There is no truly competitive IP transit market within Alaska that I am aware of. Would love to be proved wrong. Heck, GCI and ACS (the two providers with such fiber) only directly peered a handful of years ago.
Alaska is in the same continent as Canda and the Contiguous US.
VANIX (Vancouver), CIX (Calgary), Manitoba-IX (Winnipeg), WPGIX (WInnipeg), TORIX (Toronto), and an exchange in Montreal (I forget the name) exist as well as a few others in Canada (I think there’s even one out in the maritimes).
There are tons of exchanges all over the contiguous US.
I’m surprised that there isn’t yet an exchange point in Juneau or Anchorage, but that does, indeed, appear to be the case. Perhaps you should work with some other ISPs in your state to form one.
According to this: http://www.alaskaunited.com <http://www.alaskaunited.com/>
There is subsea fiber to several points in AK from Seattle and beyond.
And on a continental basis, quite a bit of undersea fiber in other landing stations around the coastal areas of the contiguous 48.
If you are buying DIA circuit from some $isp to your rural location that you call "head-end" and are expecting to receive a competitive service, and support for IPv6, well, then your expectations are either unreasonable, ignorant or both.
Interestingly both statewide providers *do* provide both IPv4 and IPv6 peering. The trick is to find a spot where there's true price competition. The 3 largest statewide ISPs have fiber that meets a mere three city blocks from one of my POPs, but there's no allowable IX. I'm looking at you, AT&T.
I’m not sure what you mean by “allowable IX”, to the best of my knowledge, anyone can build an IX anywhere.
Owen