[AusNOG] Why is peering in Australia so hard?

Sun Aug 4 17:02:26 EST 2013

Josh,

Your typical 10gbe port is relatively cheap these days and a 10gbe SFP+ is
like $100 just need to know where to shop :) You can even buy 24 port 10gbe
juniper EX2500 for $3k second hand and they come with Dual PSU as well.

Regards, *
Peter Betyounan*
Chief Technical Officer

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On Sun, Aug 4, 2013 at 4:56 PM, Joshua D'Alton <joshua at railgun.com.au>wrote:

> True, but those small ISPs are single homed and will have quite simple
> setups. Indeed a cross connect or worst case some fiber interconnect might
> be relatively cheap, but peering requires talking BGP and that for a start
> requires more expensive gear (lol @ megaport $500/month for 10G, cheap on
> OPEX sure but a single fiber module will cost you a years worth of peering,
> and a router another 5-20yrs so the CAPEX is the issue there), and then the
> engineering side. I know a few small ISPs that run a bunch of l2/l3
> services at a fairly reasonable scale, but with a grand total of 2
> networking guys max per ISP, and across all of them only a couple of CCNAs
> or similar at best.
>
> Anyway, playing devils advocate here, personally if I was an ISP beyond
> ICT/SOHO levels (so say 10k customers), I'd definitely have a national
> network and probably be selling more than just DSL tail products, but
> onselling interconnects to other similar/smaller ISPs who don't want to do
> it themselves, and peering would play a massive role in that. I think
> Megaport has mostly the right idea, especially with the free for 6 months
> part, but to reach the ISPs with only a handleful of staff and maybe only 1
> who knows what BGP even is... well that is more of an education and sales
> thing than aforementioned technical/cost reasons.
>
>
>
>
> On Sun, Aug 4, 2013 at 4:41 PM, Cameron Daniel <cdaniel at nurve.com.au>wrote:
>
>> 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<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<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<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<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<wolfgang.nagele at ausregistry.com.au>
>>>>
>>>> Web: www.ausregistry.com.au [2]
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
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>>>
>>>
>>> Links:
>>> ------
>>> [1] http://as58620.peeringdb.com/
>>> [2] http://www.ausregistry.com.au/
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>>> [4] http://www.rackcentral.com.au
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