Re: Coop Peering Fabric??

* Patrick W. Gilmore · * Tue Aug 12 08:32:30 2008

On Aug 12, 2008, at 3:37 AM, Paul Wall wrote:
If it were as easy as you make it sound, I can assure you people would
be doing it.

People are. I (and others) mentioned SIX & TorIX, plus I mentioned
PaNAP. Then there's AtlantaIX, although that recently got slurped by
TelX. (Hrmmm, could one of the "dangers" of a coop be "borg'ed by for-
profit entity looking to rip out every cent they can"? :)
Tons of others exist, in big and little markets. There's one in 365
Main SF, there's KleyReX in the same building as DE-CIX, Big APE in
111 8th, NYCx there too, ChicagoIX just opened, etc., etc.
Trust me, it _is_ being done.
Also, does your Equinix MSA contain a non-compete clause, which could
be interpreted to mean you can't run a competing IX (metro fabric,
exchange, whatever) out of their facilities?  I hear many do.

So don't run it in an Equinix or S&D cage.
--
TTFN,
patrick
On Mon, Aug 11, 2008 at 11:15 PM, Deepak Jain <[email protected]> wrote:

Warning: This may actually be operational too.
Given Cogent (and others) recent pursuit of sub $4/mb/s transit...
and the

relatively flat cost of a "paid" peering fabric (even at 10G) and
the O(N)

costs for cross-connects, the thought of revisiting the old peering
coops

presented itself again.
Assuming 10G PNI model: Assuming even nominal cross-connect fees of

$100-$300/month per fiber pair, plus router port costs for each
private peer

(assuming you aren't at >10% utilization on the port) at a commercial

exchange, you are eating a pretty significant cost per megabit you
are

actually moving. (plug in your numbers here). Assumption: Above 1Gb/s

utilization, this makes sense or you are counting on growth.
Below 10% you would normally go to a paid peering fabric where you
are

paying cross connect + a flat port charge + router port for 1->N
peers and

hoping that enough utilization occurs that you get >10% utilization
(to

recover capex, opex, etc) and then whatever additional utilization
you need

to cover the flat port charge or you are counting on growth.
A "coop", best-effort switch fabric colo'd at a few sites would allow

participants to peer off traffic at a price of the order of a single

cross-connect (~$500/month per 10G port is possible, maybe less),

private-VLANs all-around, or to only-mutually approved peers (e.g.
via an

automated web interface, prior art) to avoid many of the /old/
issues. No

requirement for multi-lateral peering. You could peer, sell
transit, buy

transit, multicast, etc.
The way I figure it, it removes approximately an order of magnitude
from the

operational cost of peering with more than a handful of your
largest single

talkers. Especially as 100G LAN Ethernet becomes production before
100G WAN

connections become commonplace. Economic theory (assuming that
worked on the

Internet) suggests this would allow for the increase in number of
peers by

approximately an order of magnitude (maybe more).
Does this actually improve the present-day "rationale" to peer, or
are most

operations' costs so far above (from long haul, etc) or so far
below (since

the cost of transit has dropped so much) that this is no longer a
relevant

part of the equation?
Warning: This may actually be operational too.
Deepak Jain
AiNET