On Mar 6, 2007, at 4:51 PM, Jason Arnaute wrote:

I am currently hosted in a small, independent datacenter that has 4 or 5 public peers (L3, Sprint, UUnet, AT&T and ... ?)

Those are not public peers, those are transit providers.

They are a very nice facility, very technical and professional, and have real people on-site 24 hours per day ... remote hands, etc. All very high end and well managed.

But, I am charged between $150 and $180 per megabit/s for non-redundant, single-homed bandwidth (not sure which provider they put it on) and even if I commit to 20 or 30 megabits/s it still only drops down to $100 - $120 per megabit/s.

That is not single-homed bandwidth. You listed 4 transit providers yourself, so they obviously have more than a single path to the Internet.

So naturally, I am very interested when I see HE.NET offering bandwidth for $20/mb/s, and it looks like Level3 is selling for $30/mb/s...

Have you checked on volume. L3 will not give you $30/Mbps for one megabit. How much are you buying now?

Are there two classes of bandwidth in the world ? Is it reasonable and expected that single homed public peered bandwidth is, circa Jan 2007, going for above $100/mb/s while private peered bandwidth like L3 and HE.NET is $30 and below ?

"Private peered bandwidth"? That is a new term I've never heard. What makes you think L3 & HE are different from the place selling you transit now? Care to define your terms?

Or am I just getting ripped off ?

Entirely possible. -- TTFN, patrick

On Tue, Mar 06, 2007 at 01:51:39PM -0800, Jason Arnaute wrote:

Hello,

I am currently hosted in a small, independent datacenter that has 4 or 5 public peers (L3, Sprint, UUnet, AT&T and ... ?)

They are a very nice facility, very technical and professional, and have real people on-site 24 hours per day ... remote hands, etc. All very high end and well managed.

But, I am charged between $150 and $180 per megabit/s for non-redundant, single-homed bandwidth (not sure which provider they put it on) and even if I commit to 20 or 30 megabits/s it still only drops down to $100 - $120 per megabit/s.

So naturally, I am very interested when I see HE.NET offering bandwidth for $20/mb/s, and it looks like Level3 is selling for $30/mb/s...

Are there two classes of bandwidth in the world ? Is it reasonable and expected that single homed public peered bandwidth is, circa Jan 2007, going for above $100/mb/s while private peered bandwidth like L3 and HE.NET is $30 and below ?

Or am I just getting ripped off ?

Where can I go to read and learn more about the advantages and disadvantages (from a networking standpoint) of switching from an independent, public peered datacenter to, say, L3 or HE.NET ?

If I understand correctly, you are comparing the cost of space at a "very nice" data center which incurs costs that you would otherwise pay for acreage, building, power, air conditioning, staff for "remote hands", presumably some physical security, and lots of redundant bandwidth ... to the cost of some amount of single-source bandwidth, presumably in bulk. That bears some resemblance to comparing the cost of a leased limousine to the sale price of a set of tires, don't you think? Or am I missing something? -- Joe Yao ----------------------------------------------------------------------- This message is not an official statement of OSIS Center policies.

Hello,

I am currently hosted in a small, independent datacenter that has 4 or 5 public peers (L3, Sprint, UUnet, AT&T and ... ?)

They are most likely giving you a single feed to their core which has 4-5 upstream connections to transit providers. Not peers really, Im sure they are paying for their transit.

They are a very nice facility, very technical and professional, and have real people on-site 24 hours per day ... remote hands, etc. All very high end and well managed.

I'm sure some of the $$ you pay for bandwidth pays for their amazing support structure.

But, I am charged between $150 and $180 per megabit/s for non-redundant, single-homed bandwidth (not sure which provider they put it on) and even if I commit to 20 or 30 megabits/s it still only drops down to $100 - $120 per megabit/s.

So naturally, I am very interested when I see HE.NET offering bandwidth for $20/mb/s, and it looks like Level3 is selling for $30/mb/s...

Are there two classes of bandwidth in the world ? Is it reasonable and expected that single homed public peered bandwidth is, circa Jan 2007, going for above $100/mb/s while private peered bandwidth like L3 and HE.NET is $30 and below ?

Or am I just getting ripped off ?

Probably not

Where can I go to read and learn more about the advantages and disadvantages (from a networking standpoint) of switching from an independent, public peered datacenter to, say, L3 or HE.NET ?

Search for the problems Cogent & Level(3) had off and on over the past couple years and decide for yourself if you want to have a single connection to a 'tier 1' provider. Personally I like to have

1 connections to a 'tier 1' provider.

Keep in mind that in order to be redundant your provider needs to buy your bandwidth twice from their upstream providers. If you are using 10mbps they need to buy 10mbps from Provider A & 10 mbps from Provider B. That way if A fails then your traffic will automatically switch to Provider B. So, if your provider is paying $30/mbps for bandwidth that is really $60/mbps. That price also doesn't cover the amazing support or the insanely priced routers that are needed to handle the ever increasing bloat that is the Internet routing table. Not knowing all of your specifics I think you are paying a fair price. -- Matthew S. Crocker President Crocker Communications, Inc. Internet Division PO BOX 710 Greenfield, MA 01302-0710 http://www.crocker.com