Carl,
Although MFS is a great source of answers for 1, 2 and 3. They are not a good
source for 4 & 5. Since the goal of MFS at the Mae's (and rightfully so) is
to make money, they will convince you that it will be a good choice. However,
if you are a regional ISP, you can't get peering with most of the big NSPs
without having a national network, and then even that may not be enough.
Sprint's public policy that 3 DS3s, 24X7 NOC and DS3 backbone suffices for
peering, but they have stopped all new peering until the end of summer, leaving
Exodus, Compuserve and a few other large networks transitting through CIX and
upstream providers. I believe that MCI Internet, ANS, UUNet and a few others
have this policy, but will peer if you meet the minimum requirements. Since
those networks together are probably 60% or greater of the routes on the
Internet, how much of a use will this connection really be.
Of course shortest-path out makes great theoretical policy. Why would you,
as a local ISP, want your customer's traffic to be backhauled all the way
to D.C. and back, just to get to someone down the street. What you'll have
to do is weigh the high costs with the small benefit you will derive from
joining Mae-West. http://www.mfs.net/MAE has all the current connections on
the maes. I'd suggest reading it through and contacting a few of the ISPs
and NSPs, gathering their policies and studying the benefits before making
a very serious jump.
Or at least look into spending a bunch of additional money buying transit
services from AGIS or CRL. They both are in the business of servicing ISPs
at the IXP level. Both with their own advantages and disadvantages.
Robert Bowman
Exodus Communications Inc.