[AusNOG] Why is peering in Australia so hard?

Cameron Daniel cdaniel at nurve.com.au
Sun Aug 4 16:41:03 EST 2013 

For most service provider networks, peering in at least one location is 
very achievable. The small networks you mention are generally set up in 
well-connected locations so they can pick up their DSL tails/transit 
cheaply. These locations typically have at least one IX present.

The cost of peering, assuming you have the ports available and meet the 
bandwidth requirements to make it commercially viable (ie. very little), 
comes down to operational expense. It's an extra "thing" that needs 
monitoring and some occasional attention from the engineering 
team/person.

Assuming the cost of peering is less than the cost of a transit port, 
it's almost always a good idea. The barrier for entry to an IX isn't as 
high as some people seem to think.

On 2013-08-04 4:16 pm, Joshua D'Alton wrote:
> And just adding to that, the scale you have in EU/US is 10-100x what
> you have here. So we might have... well hundreds of ISPs and a few
> thousand AS#, but where the 100th largest in Europe will have multiple
> PoPs with carrier grade equipment and at least 10 network engineers
> and doing 50Gbit+ traffic, the 100th network here in Australia is 1
> PoP, 2 engineers at best and doing a few hundred Mbit at best, so its
> not really cost effective to consider peering, or even practical. The
> vast majority of AU networks (ASn or not) are single homed to begin
> with, let alone thinking about peering.
> 
> On Sun, Aug 4, 2013 at 4:11 PM, Wolfgang Nagele
> <wolfgang.nagele at ausregistry.com.au> wrote:
> 
>> Hi Mark,
>> 
>> The only difference that I can agree to is the distance between
>> major cities. All the rest is the same in every market around the
>> world. In my mind the vast distances between major cities should
>> make the case for peering even stronger. Also as far as distance and
>> availability of IXes goes Australia is not that much different from
>> the US. Most peering in the US is carried out at the West and East
>> coast - same as in Australia.
>> 
>> I did receive a reply off-list that pointed out what I believe may
>> be the real reason for the difference in peering culture. In
>> Australia the Internet did not start with small ISPs all over the
>> place - it started with the Incumbent. That makes for a very
>> different dynamic around market control.
>> 
>> Cheers,
>> Wolfgang
>> 
>> On 8/4/13 9:40 AM, "Mark ZZZ Smith" <markzzzsmith at yahoo.com.au>
>> wrote:
>> 
>> I think it could be a symptom of a few differences between Australia
>> and other regions.
>> 
>> Australia has a small number of large cities, spread apart by 100s
>> of Kms. As a consequence, there are only a small number of IXes in
>> each city, and the network effect (the more something is used, the
>> more valuable it becomes), keeps that number of IXes small. If
>> you're going to connect to an interstate IX, you need to be large
>> enough to afford that sort of infrastructure (e.g, be able to afford
>> to pay for a reasonable bandwidth link that goes 100s of Kms), and
>> you're going to go to the most popular IX(es) to gain the best value
>> from peering.
>> 
>> Once you connect to an IX, multilateral peering with a couple of
>> the IX's route servers provides more value than bilaterally peering
>> in most cases, because you avoid the administrative overhead of all
>> those bilateral peering setups. 
>> 
>> To be worth doing, bilateral peering would need to either provide a
>> peering with somebody who won't multilateral peer at an IX, or
>> peering that provides more useful value than what the existing
>> multilateral peering provides.
>> 
>> Regards,
>> Mark.
>> 
>> -------------------------
>> FROM: Shaun McGuane <shaun at rackcentral.com.au>
>> TO: Tom Paseka <tom at cloudflare.com>; Wolfgang Nagele
>> <wolfgang.nagele at ausregistry.com.au>
>> CC: "Ausnog at ausnog.net" <Ausnog at ausnog.net>
>> SENT: Sunday, 4 August 2013 3:16 AM
>> SUBJECT: Re: [AusNOG] Why is peering in Australia so hard?
>> 
>> Hi Guys,
>>  
>> I just wanted to chime in here … We are peering with Wolfgang and
>> set it up last week.
>> We are all for peering .. and if anyone wants to reach out and peer
>> with us we have gear/pop in the following locations.
>>  
>> 530 Collins St (MDF / & MDC Level 15 )
>> 525 Collins St (MDF Rialto Towers)
>> NextDC M1
>> Primus DC Melbourne
>> Vocus Doody St Sydney
>>  
>> Regards
>> Shaun McGuane
>>  
>>  
>> FROM: AusNOG [mailto:ausnog-bounces at lists.ausnog.net] ON BEHALF OF
>> Tom Paseka
>> SENT: Sunday, 4 August 2013 3:01 AM
>> TO: Wolfgang Nagele
>> CC: Ausnog at ausnog.net
>> SUBJECT: Re: [AusNOG] Why is peering in Australia so hard?
>>  
>> Wolfgang,
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> Australia isn't opposed to peering any more or less so than Europe.
>> Difference is many operators wont set up direct sessions over the
>> fabric, instead relying on peering with the Route Server(s) to
>> exchange routes. 
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> Cheers,
>> 
>> Tom
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> On Sat, Aug 3, 2013 at 7:24 AM, Wolfgang Nagele
>> <wolfgang.nagele at ausregistry.com.au> wrote:
>> 
>> Hi,
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> Coming from Europe I have to say that I am still surprised about the
>> reluctance in Australia to peer with each other. Leaving the large
>> players and their various (mainly) political motives aside, why the
>> reluctance among the small providers here?
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> To put it into perspective, we've just recently rolled out a
>> substantial global Anycast deployment and while we are struggling to
>> get decent numbers of peers at various IXes here we've established
>> many in both Europe and the US.
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> Anybody can shed some light on this issue for me?
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> And for those that actually just would like to peer - our details
>> are here: http://as58620.peeringdb.com [1]
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> Regards,
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> --
>> 
>> Wolfgang Nagele
>> 
>> IT Manager
>> 
>> AusRegistry Pty Ltd
>> 
>> Level 8, 10 Queens Road
>> 
>> Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 3004
>> 
>> Phone +61 3 9866 3710
>> 
>> Email: wolfgang.nagele at ausregistry.com.au
>> 
>> Web: www.ausregistry.com.au [2]
>> 
>>  
>> 
>>  
>> 
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> ------
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