On Mon, Jan 21, 2008, Andy Davidson wrote:
Peering in Oz is MLPA. This leads to no one worrying about having to be found to form peering relationships, so peeringdb is incomplete at best. I've tried to encourage people to add their data in.
Is it always compulsory ? (I just did some legwork and read the WAIX policies, and it seems to be mandatory here) This surprises me, Multi-lateral peering is great for lots of networks, but really bad for others, and (if forced) probably acts as a barrier to the bigger networks from taking part in any public peering ....
Early on, the large providers still wouldn't peer. These MLPA IX'es were formed primarily for small providers to dodge >$2000 a megabit a month transit costs. These days, the small-now-large providers MLPA'ing at the local IX are starting to discover why MLPA is great for little players but financially silly for larger ones. That said, peering at a state IX doesn't preclude you from peering with one of the telco's (as far as I gather - I've been out of this industry for quite a while!) and for the sake of the growth of IP in Australia I'd like to see the bulk of peering still be MLPA. Cracking a bilateral peering nut in Australia would be .. funny to watch.
1/3 from (expensive) transit to the "Gang of Four) who won't peer
.... and acts as an incentive to pull out of the agreement as networks grow .. think about what happens when your customers' routes start appearing through your MLP session as well.
Then you make absolutely sure you only announce your local routes to each local MLP IX. If you announce your entire network to it then you should know what you're doing. :) A few WAIX participants do that as the cost of hauling it over their WAN links between capital cities is smaller than farming it off via transit (I'm guessing.)
I can think of some MLP-only exchanges in Europe, but I can't think of any that do significant traffic.
Completely different scale of things :) And you'll find people who run (mostly) open peering policies there too. Adrian