To top it all off, it is not all that clear that AboveNet has no retail
transit feeds. I personally know of a few ISPs using AboveNet facilities.
They re-sell Covad DSL and bring the Covad feed into their AboveNet cage,
they re-route it up from there. Of course, they are also doing this with
ELI. The thing is that they use the AboveNet internet backbone and the Covad
telco backbone, in an AboveNet cage, to refer to the specific example.
AboveNet is not in the position to know, or care, they just sell the cage
and the internet backbone. Since Covad is also in SJC, and they only sell
telco backbone, they don't care either. The titular ISP, works the margins
(as always).
rmeyer@mhsc.com (Roeland Meyer) writes:
To top it all off, it is not all that clear that AboveNet has no retail
transit feeds. ...
I had no idea (that this wasn't clear). There is never a telco circuit
between Abovenet and a customer -- it's always a private right of way,
usually a piece of fiber but sometimes copper. Abovenet's customers
include ISP's and IAP's and ASP's and so on. Your word ("retail") isn't
accurate since Abovenet's customers also include IP bandwidth consumers,
not just resellers. But it's absolutely true that our equipment is always
colocated with the customer's equipment. Sometimes it's our location,
sometimes it's the customer's location, sometimes it's a third party's
location. But it's always some shared location, thus the term "colocation".
If there any other questions about Abovenet, please address them to me
privately unless you're REALLY SURE that all of NANOG wants to hear the
question (and my near-inevitable answer.)