It is not true. Many tier-2 ISP specializes in very ghigh quality Internet access, so mnasking problems of big ISP (who in reality never can provide high quality Internet at all). Good example - Internap. So, it is not about tier-1 vs tier-2, it is about ISP specialized on cheap acvcess and ISP specialized on quality access. Is COGENT (for example only - I have nothing against them) tier-1 ISP - may be; are they high quality ISP - in NO WAY (they just provide bandwidth to nowhere without any clue). ----- Original Message ----- From: "John Dupuy" <jdupuy-list@socket.net> To: "Patrick W. Gilmore" <patrick@ianai.net>; <nanog@merit.edu> Sent: Wednesday, October 19, 2005 10:05 AM Subject: Re: multi homing pressure
For the customer with an Internet "mission critical app", being tied to a Tier 2 has it's own set of problems, which might actually be worse than being tied to a Tier 1.
The key word is "might". In fact, I would posit that a Tier 2 with
multiply
redundant transit to all of the Tier 1s could theoretically have better connectivity than an actual Tier 1. The Tier 2 transit provides flexibility that the transit-free Tier 1s do not have. Just my opinion.
Anyway, it has been my experience that most (but not all) of the customers that want to "multihome" are _really_ wanting either: A. geographic/router redundancy. or B. easy renumbering. Geographic redundancy can be done within a single AS and IP block. They just don't know to ask it that way. (And easy renumbering will eventually be solved with v6. Eventually.)
The demand for multi-homing might not be as great as suspected.
John