[5650] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Ungodly packet loss rates
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Rod Nayfield)
Wed Oct 23 11:45:03 1996
Date: Wed, 23 Oct 1996 11:38:00 -0400
From: Rod Nayfield <rod@iconnet.net>
To: Gordon Cook <cook@netaxs.com>
CC: nanog@merit.edu, rod@iconnet.net
Gordon Cook wrote:
> now you may say that from a competitive point of view this makes no
> difference. perhaps. But what if the big four no longer see the need to
> upgrade their bandwidth INTO and OUT OF exchange points? what happens to
> the "secondary ten" when they get some large customers who see their
> packects die between Sprints mae east router and the nearest sprint
> backbone POP if that pipe is over crowded. Will we hear them complain
> about ungodly packet loss and move to the industrial strength service of
> the big four who can do hot potato hand offs to each other at multiple
> private exchanges around the US and increasingly around the world? if
> such is the case, how will the secondary ten ever get enough customers to
> convince the top four to let them do private exchanges as well?
>
> Is this part of an inevitable dynamic that is and will channel market
> share into the hands of the top four?
Gordon - You're describing the dilemma of any newcomers to the net:
Assuming that the new net can get peering agreements at the public ix's
(this in itself is not easily assumed) there is still an uphill battle.
. If you don't have private interconnects, your traffic goes over the
90% avg. utilized links between the IX point and the large provider's
backbone. This makes it difficult to get and keep customers - after
all, 75% of the internet is lossy/slow to them, and if they switch to
any of the larger providers they don't see that loss.
. You can't get a private interconnect with another provider unless you
have the traffic (customers) to justify it. See previous point as to
why you can't get the customers.
Interesting points.
Rod
