[72250] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: concern over public peering points [WAS: Peering point speed publicly available?]
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Richard A Steenbergen)
Sat Jul 3 13:56:59 2004
Date: Sat, 3 Jul 2004 13:56:21 -0400
From: Richard A Steenbergen <ras@e-gerbil.net>
To: Randy Bush <randy@psg.com>
Cc: Bill Woodcock <woody@pch.net>, nanog@merit.edu
In-Reply-To: <16614.54527.235682.925898@ran.psg.com>
Errors-To: owner-nanog-outgoing@merit.edu
On Sat, Jul 03, 2004 at 08:47:11AM -0700, Randy Bush wrote:
>=20
> >> The price being charged for the public exchange ports is
> >> non-trivial
> > Only at the (very few) commercial exchanges. The vast majority
> > are free or of trivial expense.
>=20
> by count of small 10/100 switches or by traffic volume?
>=20
> it costs to build, maintain, and manage an exchange which carries
> significant traffic. costs get recovered. life is simple.
I tend to get suspicious when I know the exchange isn't charging enough
money to cover its costs. I also don't see a need for a "free exchange"=20
either. I'm perfectly willing to pay a fair price for the service, and I
at least want the BELIEF that I am going to get a certain level of service
=66rom the exchange, not "but we can't afford..." or "duhhhhhhh?". It seems=
=20
that most commercial network operators agree, as you rarely see them=20
popping up at joe bob's local alternative new exchange point, even when=20
it is free.
The cost for the exchange hardware is really not that much. Just to throw
out some numbers, you can snag a new 6509 w/SUP720 and 48-SFP GE for less
than $50k with very modest discounts. Admittidly this is relatively new
technology compared to most GE exchanges currently deployed, but the
pricing a couple years ago was around the same for the Floundry's that
everyone deployed, just at a lower density. A successful exchange probably=
=20
has multiple switches and some 10GE trunks, but with a few customers=20
paying industry average recurring fees this quickly pays for itself. The=20
euro players are really the ones to look to for examples here, US players=
=20
have been complete failures (especially with multi-site linked exchanges).
The guys best positioned to do it are the actual colo operators who
already have a technician staff on site, they really only need 1-2 higher
level engineers, a support contract for when the switch crashes, etc. The
real cost and value of an exchange point is the marketing (i.e. showing up
at nanog and giving presentations about it, creating your own peering
events, having sales folks promoting the product, etc), not the hardware.
--=20
Richard A Steenbergen <ras@e-gerbil.net> http://www.e-gerbil.net/ras
GPG Key ID: 0xF8B12CBC (7535 7F59 8204 ED1F CC1C 53AF 4C41 5ECA F8B1 2CBC)
