How many active ISPs are most of the people on this list dealing with?
1-2 - I’m an end user just trying to load balance
3-5 - I’m aggressively looking for the best paths for my “customer” traffic
6-20 - I have a meet-me POP room or a specific business need for so many connections
21+ - I’m an ISP
Thank you!
Not sure I understand the point you're getting at here ?
Surely for any ISP it will be a mixture of the above ? And if any ISP complains about such diversity of customers, surely they are in the wrong business ? If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen (as the old saying goes) ....
I think you need a bit more definition.
ISPs as in full-route providers?
Any external BGP peer?
You should probably rephrase the question in a way that makes more sense to the audience. I suspect you'll find most participants on this list are ISPs (depending on your definition of ISP). Many (most) of us also peer with lots of other networks that may or may not be ISPs in a non-ISP relationship.
What's this "simplified BGP peering solution" you're [not] talking about?
4 upstream ISP connections (2 commercial, 1 NREN, 1 partial feed from HE)
1 local IX (MBIX), so 5 more ASNs there (including HE, above) plus all the open-peering ASes accessible through the IX route servers
3 downstream customers with their own ASNs
The two commercial ISPs are because end-user internet access here is the usual telco/cableco near-total-duopoly, and those two %$#@!!s only peer ~30ms away from me. (Interestingly, I have one ILEC but two cablecos, geographically separated, within my service area.)
The NREN should be self-evident… that’s usually over 1/3 of my bandwidth, in fact, thanks to CANARIE’s CDN network.
MBIX is to cover all the non-duopoly ISPs in the province. (Guess who doesn’t show up at the IX… first infinity guesses don’t count.)
So… I actually am an end-user trying to load balance. But I’m also looking for the best paths. And I have three POPs now where I meet other carriers delivering L2 circuits. Finally, I’m an ISP but not for the general public.
I don’t think you can categorize the customer type effectively based on either the peering counts OR the number of “ISPs” they deal with. (Not to mention, you need to define “ISP” in order for this question to make sense in the first place.)
Adam Thompson
Consultant, Infrastructure Services
100 - 135 Innovation Drive
Winnipeg, MB, R3T 6A8
(204) 977-6824 or 1-800-430-6404 (MB only)
athompson@merlin.mb.ca
www.merlin.mb.ca