But, looking at today's $/bit ratio, peering is not a big of a monetary
beneift as it used to be. BAck when you only needed a DS3 to the naps for
peering, and transit cost $1200 a megabit, peering was a great cost savines.
Today, it is almost a wash, and sometimes more expensive to peer that to
just buy transit. When you can arrange transit contracts to be as low as
$50 a megabit, and to sit in a PAIX facility costs you $150K for the router,
plus $7K a month for rack and power, and monthly costs for your OC-48 into
the router... What's the true cost of peering?
You might be able to sit in a colo and buy some cheap transit from one
provider (especially if the colo isn't carrier neutral). However, if you
want diversity in your upstreams, peering quickly becomes a reality.
For people who already have a router at an exchange point or NAP, the costs
are already there. Extra ports are not expensive once you have those basics
covered.
An OC48 to PAIX, and let's say you serve all your traffic needs from there,
and ignore connection charges, or an OC48 to a transit provider at $50 a
meg? I'm pretty sure that the peering model does not hold up as well as it
should.
It's typically cheaper to get unbundled dark fiber or even local loop SONET
services to a nearby exchange point facility than to a carrier-specific POP.
You can only connect to one organization in the carrier-specific POP, while
connecting at at carrier neutral EP facility will open up a lot of options.
Also, being a customer of said EP facility has distinct advantages!!! Being
in a carrier neutal facility is one thing, being a customer at a carrier
neutral facility puts you at an extreme advantage when playing the money
game (for transit provider negotiations, building peering relationships,
bringing up new circuits for transport, et al).
Now... Do I believe that there is added benefit to peering? Yes, of
course, but not nearly what it used to be. If it's a benefit to your
customers, and helps increase your number of customers, then it may still be
a good thing.
You have to look at all the advantages/disadvantages for your organization.
People have in the past and will continue in the future to use peering to
lower costs for their networks. It's not just some side benefit for your
customers, but it can be that as well. The concept of peering hasn't changed
just because transit prices are lower. You can't always assume that the
transit prices are going to stay the same (how long can providers sell
transit at $50/meg?), peering relationships tend to last a lot longer,
EP relationships hopefully even longer - which can pay off a lot in the long
run.
If you want to talk about advantages of transit vs. peering, that has
already really been discussed over and over again on this and probably
other lists. Most networks today implement both; they compliment each
other. Can somebody get by with $50/meg transit? Yes. Is that always
going to be cheaper than adding peering into the mix? Who knows, it
really depends on a lot of factors.
dre
