Re: Transit SLA

> >>Shameless Plug: Global Crossing is at AMS-IX and offers IP Transit
> there (but not over the exchange)
> 
> Excellent. As an ISP, what do you see as the pros and cons? Would you mind sharing your SLA with the list? Thank you for your help.

Global Crossing likes to be in locations where lots of potential customers
are.  It only takes a few GigE customers (not necessarily line-rate
committments) to build a positive business case for putting a router
into a location with off-net circuits (although this varies greatly by
location).  Recently, we have completed dark fiber into several Equinix
facilities in the US and lit them with DWDM to reduce costs paid to
third party carriers.

Having on-net capacity into these locations that have numerous large
potential customers is great.  We can also decrease our average cost
to peer with other Tier 1 carriers by doing in-house x-connects inside
Equinix by being there.

The only real con is that smaller exchange points just don't offer
enough business opportunities to justify the CapEx and circuit
cost to be present at the facility.  Of course this is relevant
to Global Crossing.  Other companies may have different minimum 
POP requirements and may be willing to tolerate support situations
that don't work well for a larger carrier.

As to your SLA question, I'm not in sales, so I don't keep such things
handy.  Since we build diverse paths into these site builds, they
do carry our standard SLA for port availability, network latency,
and packet loss.  Our product team has thought about offering 
a reduced SLA for certain exchange point locations where it's not
cost effective to build diverse network, but this is just a discussion
point right now.  The concept is that since the folks that show up 
at these types of sites are typically ISPs and often buy from multiple 
providers at that same site, it is likely that they are dual-homed 
and as such can tolerate a lower SLA.

Dave

-- 
Dave Siegel                     http://www.siegelie.com/people/dsiegel/
Oro Valley, AZ
Gardening Rule: When weeding, the best way to make sure you are                 
removing a weed and not a valuable plant is to pull on it. If it                
comes out of the ground easily, it is a valuable plant.