[AusNOG] Why is peering in Australia so hard?

Sun Aug 4 19:30:42 EST 2013

>________________________________
> From: Wolfgang Nagele <wolfgang.nagele at ausregistry.com.au>
>To: Mark ZZZ Smith <markzzzsmith at yahoo.com.au> 
>Cc: "Ausnog at ausnog.net" <Ausnog at ausnog.net> 
>Sent: Sunday, 4 August 2013 4:11 PM
>Subject: Re: [AusNOG] Why is peering in Australia so hard?
> 
>
>
>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.
>

The PIPE IX in Adelaide (the middle of Australia) had 97% of the routes that were available at all the other bigger interstate IXes in around 2008/2009. Very little value at the time in paying for fat intercapital links when you're going to be shifting less than 10Mbps per interstate IX off of your transit.

Large content providers showing up on the east cost changed that a bit, however you still needed to be large enough to be able to afford the infrastructure to peer interstate.

>
>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.
>

10 to 15 years ago that might have had an effect. I don't think it has had any effect in the last 5 to 8 years. Are you aware of how many people peer at PIPE IXes or WAIX IXes around Australia? There are quite a lot. The incumbent has had nothing to do with whether people peer at those IXes or not.

However if your view point is bilateral peering, then yes, peering in Australia is hard, because multilateral peering is quite satisfactory in most cases, and therefore there is very little incentive to bilaterally peer.

>
>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
>>>> 
>>>>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
>>>> 
>>>> 
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