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Thread: Peering vs Transit
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05-03-2005, 03:48 AM #1Newbie
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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?
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05-03-2005, 06:21 AM #2CISSP-ISSMP, CISA
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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.
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05-03-2005, 07:48 AM #3Account Suspended
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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.
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05-03-2005, 07:56 AM #4Web Hosting Master
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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.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
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05-03-2005, 12:03 PM #5WHT Addict
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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.
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05-04-2005, 12:02 AM #6Newbie
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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?
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05-04-2005, 03:55 AM #7Backup Guru
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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?Scott Burns, President
BQ Internet Corporation
Remote Rsync and FTP backup solutions
*** http://www.bqbackup.com/ ***
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05-04-2005, 06:44 AM #8Web Hosting Master
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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-connectsJeff 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
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05-04-2005, 06:57 PM #9NetOps Guy
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Originally posted by muramasa
This is the provider I am considering (based in NY):
crnc.net/network
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
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05-04-2005, 07:32 PM #10Web Hosting Master
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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
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05-05-2005, 04:39 PM #11NetOps Guy
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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