Hello, We are developing a tool that helps ISPs optimize for cost when making decisions about both internal routing and interconnection for planning and traffic management. To develop the underlying algorithms, we need a better sense of how various factors contribute to an ISP's overall operational costs. Our objective is not to obtain specific numbers---we understand that individual ISPs may have very confidential information about pricing, and that you may not want to share that with us. Rather, we are seeking to build a model that any operator could use by plugging in specific numbers. Constructing this model still requires some understanding of the relative costs of various factors. We would appreciate any help you can provide. In return, we will (1) share the results of the survey with you (after anonymizing appropriately); (2) work with you to apply our optimization technique to your network to see if it can help reduce your overall costs. Thank you very much for any help you can provide, Nick and Murtaza ------------------------------------- 1. Are you a: * access ISP network * transit provider * content distribution network * other (please specify) 2. How do you account for recurring costs incurred in carrying IP traffic on your backbone? Do you incorporate both backhaul and interconnect costs? Which one of these factors tends to be more dominant? Are there other factors that are significant enough to consider explicitly? (If you have a template cost model, that would be very helpful.) 3. What are the relative costs of each of the following for interconnection? (If you feel comfortable doing so, please rank them.) * port/interface costs (e.g., 1G, 10G, etc.) * type of transmission (e.g., IP, WDM, SONET, etc.) * transit costs * others (please specify) 4. What factors affect internal network costs for carrying traffic? * port/interface costs * distance travelled (e.g., # of hops, geography - local, regional, backbone, trans-continental) * real estate costs (e.g., carrier hotel, fiber leasing...) * traffic demand or congestion in a region (e.g., is northeast corridor more expensive than other parts of the network?) * other (please specify) 5. When pricing your own IP connectivity services, do you use average cost models? Do you use the same cost structure for each customer, regardless of how much of your backbone and interconnect infrastructure they use?