|I'm looking to improve my connectivity into the AP region, in |a cost effective [i.e. for as little as possible :-)]. I have |ruled out buying transit as it doesn't help the issue that I'm |trying to resolve, so I was wondering if there was a location/IXP |in the AP region that would enable me to interconnect with |as many AP carriers as possible.
sadly the best spot to interconnect is not in the AP region, its in Palo Alto.
Is this really still true?
Some big carriers that owns lots of transpacific capacity you will see them colocated in places like Palo Alto (PAIX) or Equinix LA. Therefore to increase their transit/peering capacity they will have to order just a cross connect. IMHO, it is a good and scalable approach and easy to manage. If you have a good customer base in Asia you should go and do "regional peering" in the local IXs (i.e KIX, HKIX, JPIX etc). If you want to be competitive in that market and keep your customers happy, IMHO you should go for this, otherwise as you stated, packets for intra Asia traffic will flow to the West Coast and then come back to Asia.
In Japan there are 4 IXes I'm aware of (JPIX and NSPIXP-2 being the largest). In Hong Kong, HKIX is (last I heard) pretty popular. In Korea, I'm told there are quite a few Ixes. There is some intra-Asia meshing going on (including both carriers as well as efforts like ABONE). Is it still the case that to get from (say) Korea to Japan, the best path is through the US?
Rgds, -drc