- Transit providers who came to the exchange point for the purpose of picking up transit sales.
- If the exchange point operator is the one carrying the traffic, they lose for competing with their customers in the previous bullet; they will have taken the first steps on the path from being an exchange point operator to being a network-plus-colo provider (where they'll compete with the network-plus-colo providers just coming out of bankruptcy with all their debt scraped off).
i'm still amazed that nobody has brought up the fact that a couple of the larger colo/exchange operators that claimed they wouldn't compete with their IP customers are indeed selling IP transit-- intentionally undercutting the prices of the providers that colo'd there to sell transit partly because the colo/exchange operator kept telling the world that they would never compete with their customers in the IP transit space. clearly, interconnecting their exchange points to create a richly- connected Internet 'core' is a natural progression if their customers don't complain too loudly. not that it's a bad long-term plan-- but I do agree with Stephen in that it'll be tough for them to survive against the debt-free big boys if they emerge as clear network-plus-colo competitors and lose the few remaining bits of their 'neutral' facade. - jsb -- Jeff Barrows, President Firefly Networks http://FireflyNetworks.net +1 703 287 4221 Voice +1 703 288 4003 Facsimile An Advanced Internet Engineering & Professional Services Organization