If an eyeball network has good peering, is there much value to be gained in chasing the long tail? It certainly presents a different cost perspective if you can pay a couple of the more premium networks for your remaining 15% - 20% of traffic not on the IXes. I just don't know that I'd really worry beyond two more premium transit networks if I was an eyeball that had mostly residential subscribers.

What do I mean by premium transit network? Anyone more than $0.10/meg at 10G.



-----
Mike Hammett
Intelligent Computing Solutions

Midwest Internet Exchange

The Brothers WISP

From: "Baldur Norddahl" <baldur.norddahl@gmail.com>
To: nanog@nanog.org
Sent: Wednesday, October 14, 2020 12:08:12 PM
Subject: Re: Hurricane Electric AS6939



On Wed, Oct 14, 2020 at 1:30 AM Aaron Gould <aaron1@gvtc.com> wrote:
Do y’all like HE for Internet uplink?  I’m thinking about using them for 100gig in Texas.  It would be for my eyeballs ISP.  We currently have Spectrum, Telia and Cogent.

-Aaron

I find HE useful as a special kind of transit provider. They have more peerings than anyone and they have peerings that you will not be able to get yourself. They are not necessarily a replacement for connecting directly to local internet exchanges, but rather a supplement.

Unless you can afford to have most of the top tier transit providers, you will often get a more direct path through the many peerings of HE. Then as you grow and establish your own peerings, you will move some of that traffic away from HE to your own.

One gotcha is that for some unknown reason, some of the big content networks do apparently not peer with HE. However as an eyeball network you will have little trouble getting those directly.

Regards,

Baldur