[165299] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Evaluating Tier 1 Internet providers
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Michael Smith)
Wed Aug 28 12:54:45 2013
From: Michael Smith <mksmith@mac.com>
In-reply-to: <1377677883.64231.YahooMailNeo@web181605.mail.ne1.yahoo.com>
Date: Wed, 28 Aug 2013 09:54:28 -0700
To: Eric A Louie <elouie@yahoo.com>
Cc: "nanog@nanog.org" <nanog@nanog.org>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
On Aug 28, 2013, at 1:18 AM, Eric A Louie <elouie@yahoo.com> wrote:
> how is that really much different than "reachability"? If I look at =
my present Netflow results, it's actually a pretty amusing mix - lots of =
Netflix traffic (bear in mind we're a business ISP, not residential), =
Google (probably YouTube in there, I haven't dissected it thoroughly), =
Amazon, Yahoo, Microsoft/MSN, and that's all covered in the peering =
fabric connection. Outside of that, some private VPN-type traffic, I =
don't see a lot of government networks, just "normal" Internet browsing =
and email.
It's really "can reach" versus "how well can they reach." I can't any =
provider that would have less than a full view of the DFZ but, if your =
primary traffic is to Provider X, and one of your Tier 1's peers locally =
and the other peers in France, then you would look more closely at the =
closer one. Unless, of course, that local peer was saturated 99% of the =
time. Then France might be attractive.
In short, it's good to do a lot of due diligence in finding out exactly =
how your providers of choice are connected to your destinations of =
choice.
Mike
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> Since I'm not at the Data Center much, I don't interact with the other =
customers there. (It's 150 miles away) Due to non-disclosure, the Data =
Center gang aren't much going to share their customer contact info with =
me. But it's a nice thought, for sure.
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> -e-
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> From: Michael Smith <mksmith@mac.com>
> To: Eric Louie <elouie@yahoo.com>=20
> Cc: nanog@nanog.org=20
> Sent: Tuesday, August 27, 2013 6:48 PM
> Subject: Re: Evaluating Tier 1 Internet providers
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> You should also consider who exactly your customers (or you alone) =
want to reach. Are you mostly looking to connect to eyeball networks? =
Enterprise networks? Government networks? If you have some target =
networks you should do some due diligence to find out how well connected =
your various options are to the networks that mean the most to you.
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> If possible, I would also recommend talking to other people that are =
in your data centers, if that's possible. You might find out about =
hidden vendor-specific gremlins in that location.
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> Regards,
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> Mike
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> On Aug 27, 2013, at 12:02 PM, Eric Louie <elouie@yahoo.com> wrote:
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> > Based on various conversation threads on Nanog I've come up with a =
few
> > criteria for evaluating Tier 1 providers. I'm open to add other =
criteria -
> > what would you add to this list? And how would I get a quantitative =
or
> > qualitative measure of it?
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> > routing stability
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> > BGP community offerings
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> > congestion issues
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> > BGP Peering relationships
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> > path diversity
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> > IPv6 table size
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> > Seems like everyone offers 5 9's service, 45 ms coast-to-coast, 24x7
> > customer support, 100/1Gbps/10Gbps with various DIR/CIR and burst =
rates.
> > I'm shopping for new service and want to do better than choosing on
> > reputation. (or, is reputation also a criteria?)
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> > much appreciated,
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> > Eric Louie
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