multi-homing

Mailman List Mirror (Read Only)
1

The pressure is on to use co-location service only from Big Players. Indeed, remember the big fight
over Exodus peering arrangements? Someone (GTE?) decided that Exodus should pay them for transit
and pulled peering. since no other large network pulled such stunt the result was that GTE customers
were inconvenienced more than Exodus customers.
The message is loud and clear. If you want your server farm to have good access, put it in a good co-location
facility in the US run by (or connect your co-located equipment to) a very large provider who has good redundancy not only of their network as a whole but of their colo facility (a co-lo facility with only one WAN circuit does not have good redundancy even if the LAN is exceedingly good and fault-tolerant etc.).

Outside the US, the filtering of long prefixes doesn't seem to be as much of a problem -- but nobody wants to see an announcement from their peer of a /16 broken into individual /24 all with the same next hop.
Even when router memory and CPU capacity are not near limits, it is annoying.

(sorry that the previous version went out in MIME format, I had replied to someone else's MIME formatted message).

Dana

2

I'd disagree whole-heartedly (partly because I am not a huge, national
tier-1).

Wouldn't you rather connect your equipment to a smaller company, that is
potentially more flexible, has more clueful people, has better pricing,
and is multihomed to maybe 3 or 6 or 9 backbones?

3

No, but it depends on the capacity requirements. We looked into self-homed
vs. colo. Given that;
1) Most eCommerce projects need to be completed inside of six months.
2) Connectivity needs to happen in the first 3 weeks of project kick-off.
3) Telco WAN circuit delivery, for large capacity, takes anywhere from 6 to
18 weeks per circuit (depending on RBOC ... could be MUCH longer).
4) Facility build-out takes even longer (3 to 6 months).

For large capacity sites, colo is the only way, with potential self-homing
within two years. It just can't happen faster than that. Also, smaller
providers are out, because of public peering point congestion and that is
usually their only avenue. Large providers, with their own private
dark-fiber network, leaving only last-mile traffic to the public Internet,
appears to be the only way to go <sigh>.

4

[ i am most definitely not speaking for my daytime job. and note change
  of subject: ]

I'd disagree whole-heartedly (partly because I am not a huge, national
tier-1).

<g>

Wouldn't you rather connect your equipment to a smaller company, that is
potentially more flexible, has more clueful people, has better pricing,
and is multihomed to maybe 3 or 6 or 9 backbones?

flexibility granted, and with it a more personal touch etc. this is good
and can be a real benefit, especially to the smaller customer who needs the
high-touch support.

this discussion certainly has not demonstrated that smaller isps have more
clueful people, and is not something i would recommend a small isp show to
a prospective customer. while i often feel under-clued, i continue to be
impressed at the level of clue at many of the biggest players. most have
become soooo clueful that they no longer participate in discussions such as
this <g>.

given that tier-N, where N>=2, providers have to pay more for routing (be
it transit or 'paid peering', which is just limited transit), the assertion
that they have a price advantage would seem to assume that overall per-unit
costs increase with scale, as opposed to decrease. as this goes against
the models of most industries, it warrants explanation.

the big providers connect to all other significant providers. and with
very hefty bandwidth at many points. it's not a conspiracy, it's what we
have to do to move the traffic.

in the long run, this industry will be owned by a extremely few very large
international players, all or almost all telephants. not that i like this,
even though i helped build one of the eight tier one isps. it goes against
my leftist upbringing. but i fear it is reality.

i suspect that, in the long run, the only difference between the internet
and the railroads, telegraphs, telephants, aerospace, etc. is that many
more of the startup working folk have made real money from it. so someone
goofed, but not so significantly that it will be noticed in the long run.

randy

5

PS. The ONLY provider I can get to my Colorado Springs facility (Black
Forest) is USWest/Qwest.

6

Perhaps not...but in general I suspect the smaller the company, the easier
it is to access the clueful people (assuming they have some of course).

7

Behalf Of Randy Bush, Sent: Sunday, December 05, 1999 11:26 AM

in the long run, this industry will be owned by a extremely
few very large
international players, all or almost all telephants.

I agree. The are many reasons for this, mostly dealing with sunk-cost
infrastructure and capitalization, awa grandfathered rights of way. MHSC.NET
lost its last residential customer, to the cable-modem guys, earlier this
year. We just couldn't touch their price/bandwidth price-point without
becoming a CLEC. I don't want to be a CLEC. MHSC remains an ISP, leaving the
IAP business to someone else.

8

I know we've talked about this on the list before. Anyone know of neutral colos in either of these 2 cities ala Equinix type.

It's interesting but most carriers and major ISPs wont go into anothers colo anymore. They are looking for something neutral even if it is a small colo.

Any leads in these two cities would be appreciated.

Happy Holidays,
Dave

Thank you,
David Diaz
Chief Technical Officer
Netrail, Inc

email: davediaz@netrail.net, davediaz@fla.net, cougar@mail.rockstar.org
pager: 888-576-1018
NOC: 404-522-1234
Fax: 404 522-2191