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  1. #1

    Question Peering vs Transit

    I have a basic understanding of the difference between peering and transit. What I dont understand is how it should affect my decision when choosing a colocation provider. A provider I'm considering has their current peering/transit infrastructure listed on their site. How does it affect me and what should I be looking for? What's good, what's bad?

  2. #2
    Join Date
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    It would depend on the peers as well as your own needs. Who do you need to reach and at what price?

    As far as peering goes, most peers (at least those that you would find at a co-location provider) are pretty useless unless you have a need to reach one of those peers.

    Eyeball peers such as Cox, SBC, Comcast, etc. are somewhat attractive though.

  3. #3
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    The quality and quantity of the peering of your provider affects your network performance. Simplisticly, the larger their connections, and the larger the quantity of their public and private peering, the better your network performance will be in terms of latency to the end-user.

    Theoretically a provider with ten OC-48 or GigE connections to ten different Tier 1 peers will provide you with far faster network performance then a provider with a fastE connection to one carrier.

    You should be looking for a provider that has (large) peering and transit connections to where your traffic is going. If your traffic is destined for Europe, you would want a provider with good routes to Europe such as Deutsch Telecom or GBLX. If your traffic is destined to Asia, Verio. A list of carriers and the quantity of peers is located at http://www.fixedorbit.com/stats.htm

    There are several other variables, such as the type of router hardware, the cluefullness of their BGP engineers, and whether they are using other tools such as Route Science boxen to select best routes.

    The caveat being in some major metro areas (San Jose, Ashburn/Vienna, NYC, etc) the carriers themselves are so tightly peered that it may make only a few ms difference.

  4. #4
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    Originally posted by Dennis Nugent
    There are several other variables, such as the type of router hardware, the cluefullness of their BGP engineers, and whether they are using other tools such as Route Science boxen to select best routes.
    To expand on Dennis's point a bit, peering is beneficial when done correctly, and a disaster when done poorly. For most small and mid-sized hosting/co-location operators, there is little or no value to peering off traffic (vs paying for transit to exchange that same traffic), yet it requires a time commitment, equipment, circuits or cross-connects, and careful planning and maintenance to do correctly. Hosting customers should beware the small and mid-sized outfits that market their product based in part on their peering. That said, when done correctly, it can both reduce total costs and improve performance for end-users.
    Jeff at Innovative Network Concepts / 212-981-0607 x8579 / AIM: jeffsw6
    Expert IP network consultation and operation at affordable rates
    95th Percentile Explained Rate-Limiting on Cisco IOS switches

  5. #5
    We've looked at peering every year, but the cost / benefit doesn't add up for us - transit is cheap now + the complexity / cost of router ports / cross-connects, means that we'd have to be exchanging hundreds of megs with a peer to make it work. We have multiple gigE's and an InterNap box optimising things already, so I don't think we'd see significant latency reductions either.

  6. #6
    Thanks guys. I appreciate you taking the time to help me out. This is the provider I am considering (based in NY):

    crnc.net/network

    80% of our traffic is within the U.S. Any thoughts on this provider?

  7. #7
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    Originally posted by muramasa
    Thanks guys. I appreciate you taking the time to help me out. This is the provider I am considering (based in NY):

    crnc.net/network

    80% of our traffic is within the U.S. Any thoughts on this provider?
    We use CRNC in NYC for some of our systems, and they're excellent. Both a great network, great support, and hard to beat pricing.
    Scott Burns, President
    BQ Internet Corporation
    Remote Rsync and FTP backup solutions
    *** http://www.bqbackup.com/ ***

  8. #8
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    Originally posted by sjhwilkes
    ]We've looked at peering every year, but the cost / benefit doesn't add up for us - transit is cheap now + the complexity / cost of router ports / cross-connects
    That's only the beginning. The time and complexity involved with peering correctly is considerable. We've had to discourage several of our clients from peering because they didn't understand the costs and work involved. While I'm happy to administer peering sessions, it's usually a money-losing proposition, and it's not too difficult to demonstrate that.
    Jeff at Innovative Network Concepts / 212-981-0607 x8579 / AIM: jeffsw6
    Expert IP network consultation and operation at affordable rates
    95th Percentile Explained Rate-Limiting on Cisco IOS switches

  9. #9
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    Originally posted by muramasa
    This is the provider I am considering (based in NY):
    crnc.net/network
    Peering VS transit aside, CRNC is a great place to be, and their network is pretty good.

    Regional Peering is often not worth a lot unless you can peer with local DSL/Cable providers. Buying transit from good carriers is usually a better use of their time/money.
    AppliedOperations - Premium Service
    Bandwidth | Colocation | Hosting | Managed Services | Consulting
    www.appliedops.net

  10. #10
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    Mar 2003
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    Sioux Falls, SD
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    I'll be the first to admit that our peering isn't all that expansive. We do our best and have an open peering policy but our traffic levels/demand exclude us from peering with alot of people above us on the proverbial food chain. Nothing we can do about that, only growth will can change this. The peers we do have, however, help a great deal.
    James Cornman
    365 Data Centers - AS19151/AS29838
    Colocation • Network Connectivity • Managed Infrastructure Services

  11. #11
    Join Date
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    This is why CRNC is a great company to go with, they're really Honest!
    Its a quality you don't find a lot these days.
    AppliedOperations - Premium Service
    Bandwidth | Colocation | Hosting | Managed Services | Consulting
    www.appliedops.net

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