On Jan 17, 1997, Nathan Stratton wrote:
I hope not, I have got a lot of people asking about Atlanta-NAP. I think MFSs problem is they way they start them. I mean yes it may take selling the first few people a gigaswitch port for next to nothing, but it will grow after that. MFS has taken the cheap way out to start most of the other MAEs. I think they needed to start with Gigaswitch, UPS system, generator, and a little better pricing. If they did that then I think other would come. The hard part (and it is very very hard) is to get the first few people to come, after that it is all down hill. Just look at how fast MAE-East and MAE-West have grown, and that is with hardly any colo space at all.
The reason MAE-east and MAE-west have grown so much is because they are located in areas where there is lots of traffic flowing. The popularity of peering points has almost nothing to do with the interconnect costs, those are peanuts to most companies. Why on earth would I drag a DS3 n-thousand miles to some city that doesn't have any traffic flowing to/from it? I wouldn't, because it would be a waste of money. Also, I daresay MFS has substantially more experience in selling access to and operating peering points than you do, as they've been running the two biggest ones for years, and obviously haven't had any problem whatsoever selling access to them. The newer MAEs might not have all that many connections into them yet, but the pricing of the connection to the switch is not the limiting factor. It's the tens of thousands of dollars for the DS3/OC3 to the colo point. Alec -- +------------------------------------+--------------------------------------+ |Alec Peterson - ahp@hilander.com | Erols Internet Services, INC. | |Network Engineer | Springfield, VA. | +------------------------------------+--------------------------------------+