RE: RE: [REPForum] REPforum get-together

> > MAEs were overwhelmingly provider-centric, but notably 
> required by R&E 
> > community due to NSFnet breakup to prevent balkanization.
> 
> The MAE's were not provider-centric, they were exclusively 
> for providers. They were also not required by the R&E 
> communities, nor did the NSFnet "break up."

OK, my semantics are a bit off, but the general point remains. The MAEs were recommended as a way to keep the tail sites interconnected while using competitive backbone providers. People were afraid of balkanization.

> 
> I don't know what you mean by a transit exchange, 
> user-centric, or deriving value from benefit.
> 
> The benefit to an end-user is (the potential) for lower 
> latency, loss, and jitter to a very small subset of the 
> Internet, which may be important for an end-users 
> application.  An ISP may wish to lower latency and improve 
> total capacity to local content or eyeballs.  This is the 
> only benefit of connecting to a local exchange, and it is not 
> a benefit that exists until an exchange reaches critical 
> mass, which creates a 
> lovely chicken and egg scenario.
> 
> As far as these transit exchanges are concerned, larger 
> providers simply
> refer to these as LEC's.   The typical customer wouldn't understand
> this exchange point connection type of deal, unless, perhaps, 
> you are talking about a univerity connecting to Internet II

We're starting to see more mid-to-large orgs interested in these exchanges. Emergence of community dark fibre networks has a way of bringing them out. I think you might have to be closer to these (potential) clients to begin to see an emerging trend.

EG, Teraspan here in Vancouver can get you a fibre ring (say 3-5km, pair) in the downtown core for 1500-2000 CDN/mo. But try to get that thing terminated in a CO. No way. But you can get it terminated at the transit exchange easily and cheaply. So I
guess the LEC is Teraspan in this instance, but there's only GBICs on the ends, and those are customer-controlled. Really pretty simple.

BTW, fibre in Prince George in the downtown core is even cheaper, especially when downtown is about 8 square blocks or so. There are at least 4 similar municipalities with solid plans for fibering their downtown cores for local businesses. All of them
are looking at some sort of transit exchange for service provision to end customers.

So now they're terminated with GE at the exchange switch, and the user wants to multihome. And peer locally. Hopefully the exchange operator can facilitate this.

BTW, this can also be done with L1 at the patch panel and multiple fibre pairs. No switch nec. But this lacks scaling efficiencies.

You are right, the increased performance is a benefit. But users are starting to see value in connecting to an exchange as an end-point for dedicated condo fibre builds, obtaining service from multiple providers, ease of changing providers, and peering
with other similarly connected metro organizations. Like it or not, this is more user/consumer driven.

Is there a sustainable business model here for exchange operators, providers, and users? Open question.

Mike