On Mon, Jul 01, 2002 at 01:36:00PM -0400, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > > Here's a fun exercise: Drop your 5 busiest peers, and see if your > > operating costs a) increase, b) decrease, or c) remain the same. > > If your full cost of peering with UUNET (including things such as > depreciation) comes to $400 per mbit/sec and via a promisig local ISP you > can get transit to UUNET at $200 per mbit/sec, your costs will decrease. > Just because the IP is free with peering does not mean that it costs $0 to > peer.
Nor does it cost $0 on top of that $200 to buy transit. This may hold true to some degree for a small-ish network, but probably not for a larger one. Even factoring in depreciation, line cards, etc, I would imagine you won't find OC3 transit in 4 cities from any ISP to be as cheap as OC3 peering in 4 cities, for example. Add to that the chance that, as a larger network, you'll probably be getting your pipes at volume discounts. I never meant to imply that peering is 0-cost. I just don't agree with the blanket statement that peering (or lack thereof) has no financial impact. -c