i look forward to my next trip to sweden, where i expect many
nice free lunches
randy
If you start working in a resturant, you can probably expect that.
i look forward to my next trip to sweden, where i expect many
nice free lunchesIf you start working in a resturant, you can probably expect that.
but you seem to think they are served in exchange points, and not
just to those that run them, but to all comers. very cool.
sad to say, we're past 1999 now. out here in the free world (and
those countries we bomb and/or invade[0]) folk seem to want us to
pay for what we eat. bummer, eh?
randy
The weird thing is that I (and partners) have been running an IX wth 4
nodes since 2001 with the business model I have mentioned and as far as I
can calculate, we have at least made break-even.
At $5k a year for FE and $10k a year for GE and letting the ISP provide
their own access to the IX via whatever means they have available, it's
possible to run an IX if you just want to provide the IX L2 unicast
service and not have a lot of other services around. We calculated that we
needed three customers per PoP and we've had more than that. The initial
investment in switches was approx $50k per PoP.
Running L2 switches is quite simple, I don't see what all the fuss is
about.
If the above model doesnt work in your area, though luck for you, guess
you have to pass on the added cost to your customers.
[snip]
IXes are not for "top carriers"
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Like the economy, perhaps this is different in .se. But this is
NAnog to which you are sending the message, and the above statement
is incorrect.
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It's when the exchange is being run by a separate entity that needs a
marketing department, a well-paid staff of managers, technicians etc
that
price really goes up. All this to basically manage a simple ethernet
switch that needs some patching a couple of times a month at maximum.
For quite some months I have spent time thinking on this particular
issue. And one thing have struck me with the discussions of staffing
levels.
It is always true that if your day job get's payed by some other
revenue generating business, running a IX with that staff should be
easy. That is cross-subsidation and there is no need for recovering
costs for the IXP. At the same time, there are a number of roles you
can only take that far in that way.
One of the most obvious ones is growing the membership number. Now,
it's not always the case that an increased membership number benefits
the members, but I am willing to claim that it is in most cases. Reason
is simply that the cost of running the exchange is not directly
proportional to the number of members. So more members means less cost
per member for a non-for-profit IX. Also, more members should increase
the value for the other members as they have the possibility to
"peer-away" more traffic. Now, I am willing to claim that you can only
get new members "by reputation" up to a certain point. After that you
will need to start to actively go out and find them, and deal with
them. This will cost you money. I have with great interest followed how
non-for-profit IXPs in Europe have started employing "marketing" staff.
I have no idea if this pays off for them, but I suspect it does.
- - kurtis -