On Mon, 21 Jul 1997, Rod Nayfield wrote:
Agreed. To sum it up:
It seems that the general use of 'tiers' is based on who carries a network's IP traffic. .A first tier provider does not purchase transit from anyone
Purchase, or exchange. I.E. I was getting some transit from a customer, but I did not pay for it. So to be a first tier your routes must only be announced by you, and no other AS. I am not sure if CIX should count or not. Netrail was using CIX to get to 1 provider that was not peering, we now have peering with them, and are going to kill our CIX connection. I am not sure if this should count as being a tier one or not. It soon will not be a issue because MCI, UUNET, ANS, Sprint, Netrail and others are pulling from CIX.
.A second tier provider buys from a first tier
Yes, but they also may have NAP connection, and may even have a nationwide backbone. There are many second tier providers who have nationwide DS3 networks, and peer at many naps, but still have a small amount of transit to get to places they can't get peering setup with. Most of them want to be first tier, but should not be counted.
.A third tier provider buys from a second tier provider and so on...
generally there are a few first tiers who peer at many locations and many second tiers who are at one or two IXs and have a transit agreement, and zillions of people who buy T1s and T3s and resell.
Nathan Stratton President, NetRail,Inc. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Phone (888)NetRail NetRail, Inc. Fax (404)522-1939 230 Peachtree Suite 500 WWW http://www.netrail.net/ Atlanta, GA 30303 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "No king is saved by the size of his army; no warrior escapes by his great strength. - Psalm 33:16