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North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical Re: Definition of Tier-1
On Fri, 8 Jun 2001, E.B. Dreger wrote: > I've seen people colo'ed at AboveNet and Exodus claiming to be "Tier-1" > themselves. > > IMESHO, "Tier-1" = provider who wishes to believe that they are something > special, but cannot provide any facts to substantiate their claim... hence > they resort to vaguely-defined-at-best sales BS. > That sales BS is probably prompted by customers telling sales people that they won't buy service from anyone but a "tier 1" provider. This leads to many creative definitions of tier 1. Normally, I've found that the customer doesn't actually mean that they want to buy service from only a transit-free provider, and the ones who do want to buy service from only a transit-free provider know who they need to buy service from, so there's a mismatch between the quasi-technical "transit-free" definition of Tier 1 and the marketingland "big backbone" definition. I'm not going to argue with someone's marketing department about whether they can sell a T1 to BobCo without defining themselves as "tier 1". Hell, I'm not even going to argue with my marketing department about it. The term is so depreciated in the real world that it is like telling someone they can't call a Canon copier a Xerox machine. -travis
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