I've worked with Aaron from BandwidthAdvisor several times over the past few years. He's a top notch guy, with a great list of providers and clients. He's simply an independent agent, and gets paid for bringing business to your door. In my opinion you can't ask for a lot more than guys out there in the field pushing your products for you, with no guarantee of even a base salary. Aaron has a great international network, and is very well known in the Seattle area. Cameron Jones | cameron.jones at spry.com | AIM: sprydotcom President | http://www.spry.com/ | Cell: 206-369-1111 Spry Web Hosting | 800: 1.888.808.SPRY | Fax: 206-984-3423 -----Original Message----- From: owner-nanog@merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog@merit.edu] On Behalf Of Tim Pozar Sent: Thursday, March 24, 2005 4:29 PM To: Hannigan, Martin Cc: nanog@merit.edu Subject: Re: "Bandwidth Advisors" - www.bandwidthadvisors.com Hannigan, Martin wrote:

They're brokers. There's really nothing wrong with what they are doing, although they may not have explained it to you too well.

I guess not.

What they do is become an agent, or reseller, for a company and they get a residual on anyone they refer. So if you are a corp IT guy and you have no clue as to who's out there and what the prices are, these kinds of services "can" be useful. Almost everyone will give someone a residual for a referral, but you have to ask. :-)

Brokers are one thing. Consultants or "advisors" are another thing. I don't see anything on their web site that labels them as "brokers". I do see under their FAQ... Q. How does Bandwidth Advisors get paid? A. Bandwidth Advisors receives a small residual payment from the Telcos once the Client begins paying for the service. Nice to see it there. I know a bunch of consultants out there (me being one, Bill Woodcock, etc.) that do not take money from vendors they recommend. How can a client of a consultant really know they have the best deal when the "consultant" will not investigate all of the options out there? For those that don't know... I am now the COO of UnitedLayer. It sounds like, since I am not going to pay the "extortion" fee to Bandwidth Advisors, that their consultants won't know about our pricing and services. Even if I did pay the fee, that means that their clients can't get the best deal as I need to raise my fees to client to cover the "small residual payment" going to "Bandwidth Advisors". Tim -- 1978 45th Ave / San Francisco CA 94116 / USA // POTS: +1 415 665 3790 GPG Fingerprint: 4821 CFDA 06E7 49F3 BF05 3F02 11E3 390F 8338 5B04 "Be who you are and say what you feel because the people who mind don't matter and the people who matter don't mind." - Dr. Seuss