William B. Norton wrote: Three said that these transit prices were TOO LOW, in one case they paid about double these numbers. It was interesting that these three were a content company,

The really interesting question IMHO is this: does said content company also peers, or just buys transit? I read in Bill Norton's papers that a content company is a good candidate to peer with large tier-2s. And, an even more interesting question is: if said content company does peer, what kind of price would they be available to negotiate with their transit if they stopped peering and stick to transit-only?

Given the adjustment, I thought you might be interested in how the U.S. transit prices compare against a handful of other Peering Ecosystems: The Cost of Internet Transit in.. Commit AU SG JP HK USA 1 Mbps $720 $625 $490 $185 $125 10 Mbps $410 $350 $150 $100 $80 100 Mbps $325 $210 $110 $80 $45 1000 Mbps $305 $115 $50 $50 $30

Someone mentioned that this was comparing apples to oranges. Indeed it is, but nevertheless remains extremely interesting as related to a thread we had earlier about regional differences in P2P. The way I see things, we are greatly unequal depending on where we live. However, I have theorized the following thoughts that I would like to run by the list: <me puts the asbestos suit on> No matter where you leave, the deal you get as a hard-core swapper (remember, we're talking about P2P now) is about what it costs to buy or build transit in bulk. The operator/provider makes no profit out of hardcore swappers, just tries not to loose money. In other words: in Australia, an unlimited and unmetered megabit residential link will cost hundreds of dollars, which is about the transit cost. In California, I pay $36.99/mo for 2.5 mpbs unlimited unmetered, which is also about the transit cost. </me puts the asbestos suit on>

one can pick up a used 7500 series router equipment now for about $9K ! The configuration was with an OC-3, and FastE for peering, for about 25% of the new cost

Sounds like a lot of money to me for a 7500; if this is the eBay cost only it's more around $3.5k I would say. For $9k one could get a 12008. OTOH if it includes re-licensing and some support it sounds about right.

Deepak Jain wrote: Other than packet buffer depths and some theoretical ACL limits, is there any reason why a 7600 network would be worse than a 12000 built one?

<me owns a few Cisco shares> There is one: Cisco wants you to buy 12000s. Don't expect them to make it easy to run the same network on 7600s :-) </me owns a few Cisco shares> That being said, what you mention is probably why you find 12000s for peanuts on eBay.....

Patrick W Gilmore wrote: and I honestly do not believe that every network is selling below cost.

No, but there are enough to do it that the other ones are not too far behind. Economics 101: low prices mean there is more supply than demand, which also means that either the demand has to grow or the supply diminish. A common strategy is to sell at loss to capture a better/significant market share, which will ensure that the taxpayer and shareholders will pay the bankruptcy bill, as the disruptions caused by disappearance of a large fish are even more costly. Michel.