Does everyone agree with this, it's the only response I have received thus far (and according to the list, the sender works for a tier 1 provider). [snip] Tier 1: _Owns the fiber_, Multiple coast to coast paths of significant bandwidth Tier 2: Reseller, Major connections (DS3/OC3) to multiple tier 1 providers. Possibly: Major connections to one (1) tier 1 provider. Tier 3: Everybody else.
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.
Does everyone agree with this, it's the only response I have received thus far (and according to the list, the sender works for a tier 1 provider).
[snip]
Tier 1: _Owns the fiber_, Multiple coast to coast paths of significant bandwidth I don't think OWNS THE FIBER applies, but the rest is valid. I think a major connotation to Tier 1 is "DEFAULT FREE"... That is they do not need a default route to handle routes they don't receive through peering relationships.
Tier 2: Reseller, Major connections (DS3/OC3) to multiple tier 1 providers. Possibly: Major connections to one (1) tier 1 provider. Tier 3: Everybody else.
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.
Somehow I don't think the Tier 1 "definition" will ever be defined and agreed upon. Marketing depts. throughout the industry have used it and all come up with their own definition to suit their network. Is it the amount of exchange points one is at? The amount of "true" private peerings one has (not transit lines)? Is it the size of ones backbone in speed or geographic diversity? The size of the routes propogated? Not having a transit provider? Being connected to CIX? I can argue for all of these, and I think everyone can that operates a network. Therefore, being a subjective definition that was never clearly decided upon by any reasonable process makes it about as useful as Mae-West's UPS system. The Tier 1 lingo is disappearing quickly--I hope it proceeds at that pace to disappear completely. Hopefully useful terms can be devised to describe the networks in a objective, technical fashion, not spun to hell and back by our various marketing folks. Rob Exodus Communications Inc.
Does everyone agree with this, it's the only response I have received thus far (and according to the list, the sender works for a tier 1 provider).
[snip]
Tier 1: _Owns the fiber_, Multiple coast to coast paths of significant bandwidth I don't think OWNS THE FIBER applies, but the rest is valid. I think a major connotation to Tier 1 is "DEFAULT FREE"... That is they do not need a default route to handle routes they don't receive through peering relationships.
Tier 2: Reseller, Major connections (DS3/OC3) to multiple tier 1 providers. Possibly: Major connections to one (1) tier 1 provider. Tier 3: Everybody else.
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.
A number of ISP's and backbone providers (national and international) all colocate on our facilities. One of the most asked questions I recieve from everyone is the question asked regarding Tiers. I have come up with IMHO a response to them that seems to be well accepted. Now I'm not saying this is true in all instances, but it seems acceptable. I define a Tier 1 network as a company who has a robust OC3 backbone and peers at a majority of the major NAPs (and private peering) in the U.S. and around the world. Now, this OC3 backbone should not only go East to West but North to South,be somewhat fault tolerant, and provide reasonable connectivity to ISP's throughout the country and serve as gateway connections to international backbone ISPs. If you use this loose definition of Tier 1 network, you see immediately you have the big 10 or 15 who are very selective in choosing their peering partners. A Tier 2 network could be defined as a DS3 backbone (maybe with some OC3 but a majority DS3) who would have a large amount of bandwidth East to West or North to South but does not have as large a communications infrasturcture or network mesh as a Tier 1 provider. These companies would peer at some of the major NAPs (plus private peering) but would also appear as many of the other exchange points where the Tier 1 providers wouldnt bother appearing. These Tier 2 players may peering with some ot the Tier 1 but not all of them. Or even if they should because their network is not as robust as the Teir 1 they would fall into the Tier 2 catagory. A Tier 3 network provider I consider to be a Regional backbone company. This is a company to has a minimum of a 10 meg backbone within a region. This is a company who is providing transit services to other smaller ISPs within his region. He may connect at some of the regional exchange points or conduct private peering with other Tier 3 providers in his area. Typically this level network would not peering with a Tier 1 at all and most Tier 2 providers will not peer either. Below Tier 3 are the ISP ranks, or smaller ISPs. Using this type of philosphy for defining Tiers could work with the U.S. Domestic network providers but falls apart when you begin looking at a global view. There are companies who would be considered a Tier 1 provider within their own country but when they run their own bandwidth to the U.S. they are often times considered a Tier 2 or lower Tier network when looking for peering partners. As such they are often forced to purchase transit from the U.S. Tier 1 or 2 providers. With this there is still an inequality when trying to apply a Tier structure on an international basis. There is no throught to the cost of the communications lines and and sometimes the benefit that can be derived through a peering process with international backbone networks (those with DS3 international lines). I'm not saying this is true in all instances, but it appears to the the norm rather than the exception. I think, IMHO, that by using this approach, combining both the size of the physical network, technology and peering provides a starting point for looking at or trying to define a Tier Structure. Will this work in all cases??? I doubt it because there are always exceptions. But it is a starting point for looking at networks from a global view. Rick Telehouse America (718)355-2559 P.S. The opinions present above are personal and in no way reflect the views of Telehouse....:)
Interesting Tier 1. You'd only have 2 Tier 1s in this case, MCI with their OC12 backbone and Sprint with their OC3 backbone. UUNET, ANS, BBN (the other big three) operate a DS3 backbone--UUNET is not yet at OC12 to the best of my knowledge. Put things into persepective.
A number of ISP's and backbone providers (national and international) all colocate on our facilities. One of the most asked questions I recieve from everyone is the question asked regarding Tiers. I have come up with IMHO a response to them that seems to be well accepted. Now I'm not saying this is true in all instances, but it seems acceptable.
I define a Tier 1 network as a company who has a robust OC3 backbone and peers at a majority of the major NAPs (and private peering) in the U.S. and around the world. Now, this OC3 backbone should not only go East to West but North to South,be somewhat fault tolerant, and provide reasonable connectivity to ISP's throughout the country and serve as gateway connections to international backbone ISPs. If you use this loose definition of Tier 1 network, you see immediately you have the big 10 or 15 who are very selective in choosing their peering partners.
A Tier 2 network could be defined as a DS3 backbone (maybe with some OC3 but a majority DS3) who would have a large amount of bandwidth East to West or North to South but does not have as large a communications infrasturcture or network mesh as a Tier 1 provider. These companies would peer at some of the major NAPs (plus private peering) but would also appear as many of the other exchange points where the Tier 1 providers wouldnt bother appearing. These Tier 2 players may peering with some ot the Tier 1 but not all of them. Or even if they should because their network is not as robust as the Teir 1 they would fall into the Tier 2 catagory.
A Tier 3 network provider I consider to be a Regional backbone company. This is a company to has a minimum of a 10 meg backbone within a region. This is a company who is providing transit services to other smaller ISPs within his region. He may connect at some of the regional exchange points or conduct private peering with other Tier 3 providers in his area. Typically this level network would not peering with a Tier 1 at all and most Tier 2 providers will not peer either.
Below Tier 3 are the ISP ranks, or smaller ISPs.
Using this type of philosphy for defining Tiers could work with the U.S. Domestic network providers but falls apart when you begin looking at a global view. There are companies who would be considered a Tier 1 provider within their own country but when they run their own bandwidth to the U.S. they are often times considered a Tier 2 or lower Tier network when looking for peering partners. As such they are often forced to purchase transit from the U.S. Tier 1 or 2 providers. With this there is still an inequality when trying to apply a Tier structure on an international basis. There is no throught to the cost of the communications lines and and sometimes the benefit that can be derived through a peering process with international backbone networks (those with DS3 international lines). I'm not saying this is true in all instances, but it appears to the the norm rather than the exception.
I think, IMHO, that by using this approach, combining both the size of the physical network, technology and peering provides a starting point for looking at or trying to define a Tier Structure. Will this work in all cases??? I doubt it because there are always exceptions. But it is a starting point for looking at networks from a global view.
Rick Telehouse America (718)355-2559
P.S. The opinions present above are personal and in no way reflect the views of Telehouse....:)
Rob, I'm not saying that there were many....:) but I'm looking towards the future as things begin to get muddled and that mixed nets could be considered and lets not forget exceptions....as we all know, there are always exceptions...:)
Interesting Tier 1. You'd only have 2 Tier 1s in this case, MCI with their OC12 backbone and Sprint with their OC3 backbone. UUNET, ANS, BBN (the other big three) operate a DS3 backbone--UUNET is not yet at OC12 to the best of my knowledge. Put things into persepective.
Take care.... Rick Telehouse America (718)355-2559
Does everyone agree with this, it's the only response I have received thus far (and according to the list, the sender works for a tier 1 provider).
[snip]
Tier 1: _Owns the fiber_, Multiple coast to coast paths of significant bandwidth
Of the large national network service providers, few actually own their own fiber. Sprint and MCI do; UUnet was bought by someone that does, PSI doesn't, AGIS doesn't, BBN doesn't, ANS doesn't. Netcom, CRL, Genunity, Verio, Exodus, Internex, and the like don't. Given that there are at least 6 major backbone providers by anyone's standards and probably more like 20, and that only 4-5 companies own the fiber, obviously there's a mismatch there. The number of companies with DS-3 backbones to 3 widely seperated interexchange points (the previous "Tier 1" definition") now is very close to 50. Owning fiber is probably not applicable. -george william herbert gherbert@crl.com
Has "fiber" or has "the" fiber? (GTE owns fiber, but do BBN circuits go over GTE circuits?) -Deepak. On Thu, 17 Jul 1997, Dorian R. Kim wrote:
On Thu, 17 Jul 1997, George Herbert wrote:
that does, PSI doesn't, AGIS doesn't, BBN doesn't, ANS doesn't.
Correction, BBN was bought by someone who has fiber.
-dorian
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
Only time I've heard mention from ISPs about tiers is usually from some small ISP claiming that they are a "tier 1" provider because they own some piece of equipment at a NAP. Someone named Winstar called up one of my clients trying to get them to switch from AT&T to Winstar because "winstar is a tier 1 and AT&T Worldnet is only a tier 2 provider". This whole thing reminds me of the useless "bandwidth to net" stat that is listed so prominently in Boardwatch. BTW: Has anyone used a program called treno to measure bandwidth availability on the Net from different points? -- Allan Chong allan@alum.mit.edu I guess I kinda lost control, because in the middle of the play I ran up and lit the evil puppet villain on fire. No, I didn't. Just kidding. I just said that to help illustrate one of the human emotions, which is freaking out. Another emotion is greed, as when you kill someone for money, or something like that. Another emotion is generosity, as when you pay someone double what he paid for his stupid puppet. -- Jack Handey
Some time ago Allan Chong said:
Only time I've heard mention from ISPs about tiers is usually from some small ISP claiming that they are a "tier 1" provider because they own some piece of equipment at a NAP.
We call ourselves a "Second Level Provider". We get our connection directly from SprintLink. I explain it to them as "First Level" would be Sprint, MCI, UUNET, etc. They have national backbones and are at multiple NAPs. "Second Level" providers get their connectivity from "First Level" prodivers. "Third Level" prodivers get their connectivity from "Second Level Providers". I generally note that there do not seem to be a whole lot of "Third Level" providers. I also note that the distinctions between the levels are quite fuzzy? I can't really think of NetCom as in the same league as Sprint or MCI, but by that definition they are a first level provider.
This whole thing reminds me of the useless "bandwidth to net" stat that is listed so prominently in Boardwatch. BTW: Has anyone used a program called treno to measure bandwidth availability on the Net from different points?
We counter the "we have more bandwidth than you have" by pointing them to our bandwidth utilization stats on our web site. We publish the utilization of our uplinks to the 'Net for any and all so see. --Eric -- Eric Wieling (eric@ccti.net), Corporate Communications Technology Sales: 504-585-7303 (sales@ccti.net), Support: 504-525-5449 (support@ccti.net) A BellSouth Communications Specialist. No, I don't work for BellSouth, I'm just on the phone with them so much that I'm an expert at getting them to do things.
At 6:09 PM +0000 7/17/97, Danny wrote:
Does everyone agree with this,
Nope. I wrote up a description of the tiers over a year ago but it's a little dated now. You can read it at http://sidhe.memra.com/rough.txt but I think that the tier 2 that I described has gotten fuzzier over time. I still believe that the best indicator of a tier one provider is that their network spans a continent. Of course there are other characteristics that the top tier shares for the most part but the continent spanning seems to be the best characteristic to hang a rule of thumb on.
Tier 1: _Owns the fiber_, Multiple coast to coast paths of significant bandwidth Tier 2: Reseller, Major connections (DS3/OC3) to multiple tier 1 providers. Possibly: Major connections to one (1) tier 1 provider. Tier 3: Everybody else.
This is describing telecomm companies, i.e. Worldcom, AT&T, et all are Tier one, then the long distance resellers and then the LECs etc. But this has nothing to do with the Internet so it's wrong. Fiber is irrelevant to the Internet. IP flows and routers are all that matters. P.S. no doubt some of you are about to point out that fiber is important because we need it to run IP flows between routers. But the point is that IP flows run over *ANYTHING* and the Internet is th collection of IP flows and routers. IP flows are lines and routers are dots. Look familiar? ******************************************************** Michael Dillon voice: +1-415-482-2840 Senior Systems Architect fax: +1-415-482-2844 PRIORI NETWORKS, INC. http://www.priori.net "The People You Know. The People You Trust." ********************************************************
Date: Thu, 17 Jul 1997 18:09:13 +0000 From: Danny <danny@UPT.ORG> Subject: Re: tiers? (fwd) To: nanog@merit.edu
Does everyone agree with this, it's the only response I have received thus far (and according to the list, the sender works for a tier 1 provider).
[snip]
Tier 1: _Owns the fiber_, Multiple coast to coast paths of significant bandwidth
May not use fiber for IP? May just lease it to others??
Tier 2: Reseller, Major connections (DS3/OC3) to multiple tier 1 providers. Possibly: Major connections to one (1) tier 1 provider. Is this an NSP?
Tier 3: Everybody else. It seems that there are many levels here. National, Regional, State, local, etc.
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.
Dave Nordlund d-nordlund@ukans.edu University of Kansas 913/864-0450 Computing Services FAX 913/864-0485 Lawrence, KS 66045 KANREN
participants (12)
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Allan Chong -
Danny -
DAVE NORDLUND -
Deepak Jain -
Dorian R. Kim -
Eric Wieling -
George Herbert -
Jon Hartford -
Michael Dillon -
owen＠DeLong.SJ.CA.US -
Richard Mataka -
Robert Bowman