[106758] in North American Network Operators' Group
Coop Exchange
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Donald J Westlight)
Tue Aug 12 11:27:42 2008
Date: Tue, 12 Aug 2008 08:27:12 -0700
In-Reply-To: <mailman.65828.1218551027.43406.nanog@nanog.org>
From: "Donald J Westlight" <westligh@ohsu.edu>
To: nanog@nanog.org
Errors-To: nanog-bounces@nanog.org
The main argument for an exchange is qualitative. Do you want your bits =
to get where they are going with low latency, jitter, and packet loss? =
Exchanges are a very practical way to solve the N squared peering =
problem. =20
Speaking as a founder of a small exchange; it does all come down to =
money.
Quality hardware is expensive, and combining this with the OPEX for =
co-lo/power, etc. starts to get a bill on the order of $500/mo/gigE =
port. In my experience, the larger the company, the less likely they =
will be willing to pay anything to support a shared peering fabric (at =
least in my market.)
Our membership tends to be regional players who are used to cooperating =
already, and together start to approximate the capability of one of the =
big carriers. Exchange membership also jumpstarts business with larger =
carriers when they arrive.
I just toured the SIX last month, and I=92m really impressed by their =
operation. Everybody has costs. I am particularly interested in what =
NANOG would consider fair, and on top of that whether or not a quorum =
would actually pay.
I am particularly concerned that the "race to the bottom" describes cost =
and quality, as well as limitation of new application development and =
deployment...
If you guys have a blueprint for a community or coop exchange that you'd =
subscribe to, I strongly suspect that it would happen. I'm happy to =
talk more about this off list with anybody interested.
Don Westlight
NWAX.NET, est 2001=20
Portland Oregon
921 SW Washington
22 Members
1.3gb daily max
westligh@ohsu.edu=20
