[189730] in North American Network Operators' Group
Traffic engineering and peering for CDNs
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Graham Johnston)
Mon Jun 6 09:36:48 2016
X-Original-To: nanog@nanog.org
From: Graham Johnston <johnstong@westmancom.com>
To: "'nanog@nanog.org'" <nanog@nanog.org>
Date: Mon, 6 Jun 2016 13:36:43 +0000
Errors-To: nanog-bounces@nanog.org
Lately I have been putting in some effort to maximize our IX connections by=
trying to work with the top 5-ish list of ASNs that still send us traffic =
via a paid transit connection despite the fact that we are both present on =
the same IX(s). In one case I missed the fact that one ASN wasn't using the=
IXs route-servers, that's on me for not spotting that one.
Even with proper IX peering in place though it seems like some CDNs are bet=
ter at using the IX connections than others. ASN 15169 for instance does a=
n excellent job sending more than 99.99% of traffic via the IX connection; =
thank you. While others only seem to manage to send 60 - 80% of traffic via=
the IX. What I am not understanding about the respective CDN's network wh=
erein they don't send traffic to me through a consistent path? Is the conte=
nt coming from widely different places and rather than transport it across =
their own network from a remote site they would rather hot-potato it out a =
local transit connection? Are their transit costs so low that they don't c=
are about using an IX connection over transit unlike a small operator like =
me? Is this just a non-obvious issue wherein they maybe just can't originat=
e enough of the traffic near the IX and therefore don't make use of the IX =
connection, again a hot-potato phenomenon?
Secondly can someone explain to me why some CDNs want a gigabit or two of t=
raffic to be exchanged between our respective networks before they would pe=
er with me via a public IX? I totally get those kinds of thresholds before =
engaging in a private interconnect but I don't understand the reluctance wi=
th regard to a public IX, that they are already established at. Is it again=
just a simple case of bandwidth economics that operate at a different scal=
e than I can comprehend?
I'm hoping the community can shed some light on this for me as I'm trying t=
o avoid grilling the operators that are working with me as I don't expect t=
hose front line individuals to necessarily have a full view of the factors =
at play.
Thanks,
Graham Johnston
Network Planner
Westman Communications Group
204.717.2829
johnstong@westmancom.com<mailto:johnstong@westmancom.com>
P think green; don't print this email.
