Re: Coop Peering Fabric??

* David Diaz · * Tue Aug 12 09:56:32 2008

Patrick
Love the Borg comment.
Great thread. Old topic. It recycles every couple of years. Not to
speak for telx or Mike L but I do not think anyone was motivated to
Borg anything but to support AIX. 10Gig ports are expensive.
I like the idea of more exchange points in that they usually provide
more recovery pts and redundancy, allow the sharing of skills and
knowledge in the local community, and provide flexibility for growth
and change of the internet. How many COs do we have? There has long
been the argument of how many IXs are needed, would it be 1 per
state? What happens with Voip, IPtv etc.
As for coops I think the argument is would the larger traffic players
feel comfortable connecting and making it a part of their networks?
Who are the anchors and 1st movers? What are the guarantees that any
investment in infrastructure needed to get there will be recovered
over X years... Will the coop fold before that pt? Wll it have the
resources to upgrade.
I so not think a poison pill is needed. Perhaps just a group or
company championing Coops and giving them booth-space at events,
sponsoring conference travels, providing rack space etc. But if it's
in the BEST interest of the members to have a larger group come in and
take over then what is the harm? What is the alternative, have members
pay membership fees? Corp Sponsorship?
I agree on much of this. But as with most things it comes down to
money. Do members have a financial incentive to join and what is the
financial model to keep the Coop moving forward as a success.
David D

On Aug 12, 2008, at 8:32 AM, Patrick W. Gilmore wrote:
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