Re: Cogent/Level 3 depeering

On 10/6/05 10:30 AM, "Randy Bush" <randy@psg.com> wrote:

>>> Is being a tier-1 now a good or bad sales argument when
>>> selling internet access ?
>> Its a great sales argument. That's why everyone claims to be
>> one. It just sounds SO good. And its not like the Peering
>> Police are going to enforce it.  What does it mean in real
>> life? Nothing. Nada. An organization's SFI status is a
>> particularly poor criteria for choosing a transit
>> provider. There are so many better factors to use - support,
>> packet loss, price, latency, availability, provisioning speed
>> - you name it, its a better criteria than SFI status.
> 
> packet loss and latency to *where*?  before replying, consider
> that most of a leaf's traffic is either to/from another leaf of
> a tier-1 to which they're (possibly indirectly) downstream, or
> to/from the tree of a tier-1 which peers with the tier-1 to
> which they're attached.
> 

Consider this: A Tier 1 (SFI network) with congested peering links vs a
non-SFI network with wide open transit pipes. I know I'd pick the latter.

Latency when all inter-network links are uncongested is going to be pretty
low in any case. 

> if tier-n, where n > 1, is buying transit from tier-1s, which
> they have to do, then the price game seems to be pretty
> determined unless one likes to run at a loss or is cross-
> subsidizing from some other product line.
> 
> all your bases are belong to us. :-)
> 
> randy
> 

Dan