Anyone care to take a stab at what places a provider in a given "tier-group"? Seems to me as though the large(st) providers are a bit harsher (naturally) than the smaller providers.
I hear this question a lot, and I don't want to get off on a rant, but... Why do you want to know? It is getting to be a useless rating. What connotation is supposed to come with being a "Tier-X" provider? Is it indicitive of performance? I don't think so. Despite all the controversy and nit-picks, think for a moment about the one note that it seems everybody can agree on: How big is the company network. Quite frankly, who cares? Access to any network shouldn't be chosen by size, but by whom can get you the best performing, most reliable access to your destination. It's that simple. I've seen supposedly smart MIS people, and even engineers make an poorly formed rash decision that they wanted to be connected to a Tier 1 provider. Think about your destination! If you need to connect two remote offices on different parts of the country, then pick the same reliable provider for both locations. Even if you're talking about generic, all round, varied destination Internet access, the "Tier" rating is still near useless. I'm sure that most everybody on this list has gotten enough of a glimpse of the "big 5", 6 or 50 to know that the performance varies among them just as much as it does among the smaller players, whether they get a tier rating of 2 or 3. I personally have glimpsed the performance of what I consider to be the worst ISP in the business, (whom I'll refer to as "LAGIS" to protect the guilty ;), and I can honestly say that performance from most of the "Tier 2" providers around would have been far superier, and much less costly. Think about one of the other often-quoted metrics of a "Tier 1" provider. Someone who doesn't have to buy bandwidth, they just peer with others. I know I'd be rather sad if every packet of traffic I had to pass went through one of the crowded peering exchanges. Don't get me wrong, I have respect for a great many of the providers that are considered Tier 1 right now. But that respect isn't granted based on the size of their network, but of their reliablity and their expertise. Well, sorry about the rant. Let me know if I'm wrong about any minutiae. I'll be sure to catalog them for the next poor soul who triggers this outburst ;) -Jon