From: Jeff Wheeler Sent: Wednesday, December 15, 2010 7:24 PM To: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: peering, derivatives, and big brother
Invisible Hand Networks was really meant to be a spot market. The same problem exists with bandwidth spot markets that always has existed, the cost of ports to maintain sufficient capacity to the exchange, and the lack of critical mass, meaning that the spot bandwidth is either pretty expensive, or there is not enough capacity for any serious application. Certainly, no spot bandwidth market currently in existence can compete with even mid-sized CDNs; and I do not believe that will ever change.
The only way I could imagine it working is something like Equinix does with their Equinix Direct product http://www.equinix.com/data-center-services/network-connectivity/ip-conn ectivity/ What I really miss is the old Telseon model. If I had a Telseon connection, I could configure a "logical wire" to any other Telseon customer (basically provision a vlan through their fabric between us) with a web interface. I could call the other end, we agree to create the path, I configure it on the web page, they accept it, the next day there is a path between us. It was a beautiful system. If I wanted to adjust my bandwidth cap on any of the "logical wires", I that was done with a web interface, too. I could raise it for a week and drop it back down and pay only for what I used. It was billed daily at the configured bandwidth cap. Problem was that many of the colo providers hated it as it allowed people basically unencumbered access to any other Telseon customer within 24 hours. Some absolutely refused to allow Telseon into their data centers, others insisted on placing their sales force in the path destroying the value of the product. It was wonderful, I miss it.