[AusNOG] Why is peering in Australia so hard?

Sun Aug 4 17:07:41 EST 2013

I've personally connected small networks to IXes that have no permanent network staff at all. If this were really the issue the question as to how these networks conducts their business is a serious one …

The argument about CAPEX for the port is ridiculous - again, look at the price they are currently paying for transit. This is just short sighted, nothing else.

This whole thing screams for a get together during AusNOG in Sydney?

On 8/4/13 4:56 PM, "Joshua D'Alton" <joshua at railgun.com.au<mailto: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<mailto: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<mailto: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<mailto: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<mailto:shaun at rackcentral.com.au>>
TO: Tom Paseka <tom at cloudflare.com<mailto:tom at cloudflare.com>>; Wolfgang Nagele
<wolfgang.nagele at ausregistry.com.au<mailto:wolfgang.nagele at ausregistry.com.au>>
CC: "Ausnog at ausnog.net<mailto:Ausnog at ausnog.net>" <Ausnog at ausnog.net<mailto: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<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<mailto: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<mailto: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<tel:%2B61%203%209866%203710>

Email: wolfgang.nagele at ausregistry.com.au<mailto:wolfgang.nagele at ausregistry.com.au>

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Links:
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