On Thu, Oct 06, 2005 at 01:33:38PM +0200, Mikael Abrahamsson wrote:
It's more likely someone skimps on connections they pay per meg for than peering links, therefore it's in my expereience more likely to be uncongested on peering links than transit links.
Sometimes yes, sometimes. no. With a transit provider I can call a sales rep and have a new circuit installed in 30 days or I start getting SLA credits. If said provider is doing something wrong, I can vote with my wallet and take my business to someone else who will do better. With a peer, even a friendly one, you are at the mercy of the cashflow, capacity, goodwill, and traffic engineering clue of another network that is essentially out of your control. Some folks are really good at peering, and some folks are really really bad at peering. Ask anyone who does enough peering and they will have a list of network about whom they will say "if we didn't send them X amount of traffic, we would shut their non-responsive prefix-leaking non-upgrading frequent-outage asses off in an instant". Just because a network is big and important doesn't mean that they are taking proper steps to manage the traffic and ensure reliable peering, or even that there is anyone manning the helm at all. And then there is AT&T... But that is an issue for another day. :) In my experience, since there is "no revenue" associated with the peering port on the other side, even very big networks who depend on reliable peering for their business manage to sit on necessary upgrades to peers for months or even years longer than they would if it was a customer port. -- Richard A Steenbergen <ras@e-gerbil.net> http://www.e-gerbil.net/ras GPG Key ID: 0xF8B12CBC (7535 7F59 8204 ED1F CC1C 53AF 4C41 5ECA F8B1 2CBC)