[AusNOG] Netflix in AU, break up Go4, or TPG peering breakup?

[Chris Ricks]

I disagree with the assertion that mandating participation in public IX arrangements would kill the transit market. 

Like it or not, far too many residential, corporate and enterprise customers make selections based on factors that are almost unrelated to pricing. A quick examination of non-carrier (and some carrier) companies in the ASX200, government departments, state and federal government selection panels, government entities, charities, major data centres, small and medium businesses and local offices for international corporations shows a very small subsection of carriers providing services. 

The value that Telstra and (to a lesser degree) Optus offer to these companies has little to do with price. As Joshua has mentioned a few times, the ubiquitous ability to provide the last mile (via fibre, copper, cellular and microwave) across all markets, standards compliance, international relationships and a perception of stability (rightly or wrongly) unfortunately trump superior product offerings, agility, openness of design and direct access to amazingly great network people. 

More simply than this, peering will never get you everywhere on the net. Unless you're in a position where you're happy to be cut off from addresses that aren't IX-reachable, you'll be buying transit. If you're not in a position to connect to an IX, you'll be sourcing connectivity that is purely transit or you'll be tasking one-or-more providers with making your services/content available through some means (colocation, hosting and so on). 

Some of our geographical neighbours have mandated peering, and although they have larger populations in a smaller area there are still dominant carriers that enjoy the same status as Optus and Telstra in Australia. 

With all that said, can anyone confirm with certainty that TPG are now a member of the GoF? If they follow their normal SOP, they'll potentially disrupt the domestic transit market (although AAPT seemingly were trying to do that with the transit prices they were quoting prior to the acquisition). 

Chris 
----- Original Message -----

From: "Joseph Goldman" <joe at apcs.com.au> 
To: "Mark Newton" <newton at atdot.dotat.org> 
Cc: ausnog at lists.ausnog.net 
Sent: Monday, 21 July, 2014 11:14:41 PM 
Subject: Re: [AusNOG] Netflix in AU, break up Go4, or TPG peering breakup? 

The Go4 make up a lot of AU user base and if they were forced onto a public IX, those who do host content can get easier connectivity to them. With that being the case, yes it would effectively kill the domestic transit market, which I noted in some way in my original post, but could be a major benefit to the industry as a whole, minus a few feeling the pain of the lost market. Again, and especially after this conversation, I agree there are more in depth issues that need to be considered but my initial comment was based mostly on the idea of a network operator only having to worry about purchasing international, and maintaining peering. 

On 21 July 2014 22:52:39 GMT+10:00, Mark Newton <newton at atdot.dotat.org> wrote: 



On 21 Jul 2014, at 22:09, Joseph Goldman <joe at apcs.com.au> wrote: 


<blockquote>
I personally (as the person who brought up government mandates) was actually suggesting that ISP's (those that deliver internet access to end users, specifically, vs say content hosters like Netflix) be forced to join IX's, in an attempt to break up Go4 and make most domestic transit affordable for everyone. 



Okay, I'll bite: 

It's 2014. Why is the Go4 so important to you? 

It doesn't appear to be relevant to the medium-sized parts of the industry anymore. 
There was a time when it utterly dominated discussion on aussie-isp, but that was 
a very long time ago, and these days it's barely mentioned at all. 

I doubt it's meaningful to Telstra anymore: their peering policy would very likely be
exactly the same without the ACCC-mandated ruling, except for the fact that they'd 
probably de-peer AAPT. 

And let's not forget Optus:  They don't want to meet you at peering exchanges either. 
Their choice, without Telstra's monopoly legacy.  Abolishing the Go4 won't change 
their behavior either. 

So why does anyone else care about it anymore?  How is it meaningfully different from the 
situation you'd be in if you were American, and Level(3) and AT&T declined to peer 
with you because it was more commercially beneficial for them to sell you traffic 
instead? 

I'm not saying you shouldn't break out the Peering Playbook and see if you can 
make it cheaper for Telstra and Optus to peer with you than not peer with you.  Fair 
game, 'n' all that. 

But, invoking the Government to swoop in and make it all better for you?  Really? 

Suggestion:  Buy transit from non-Go4 suppliers (such as, f
 or
example, Vocus). Peer 
aggressively at the -IX's to maximize the amount of domestic carriage you can do 
for zero marginal cost.  Maintain connections to Telstra and Optus, buying domestic 
transit only, on short term contracts where they know you're playing them off 
against each other on price.  In this marketplace, domestic transit is 
virtually indistinguishable from paid peering anyway, so sign up for that and see 
how far down you can drive your Telstra spend by moving your traffic away from 
Telstra. 

(or in your case, Optus) 

If you're an eyeball ISP with 80% of your traffic heading internationally, and you 
pick up half of the remainder with peering, only 10% of your total traffic mix 
will need to come from a Go4 member. 

What do you think would happen to bandwidth prices in this country if more of you 
lot behaved like that, instead of stitching up long-term high-bandwidth transit 
contract
 s with
Telstra and Optus, or signing up with VISP suppliers who take away 
your decision-making control about your bandwidth supplies? 

- mark 



</blockquote>

-- Sent from my Android device with Pigeon. 
_______________________________________________ 
AusNOG mailing list 
AusNOG at lists.ausnog.net 
http://lists.ausnog.net/mailman/listinfo/ausnog 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.ausnog.net/pipermail/ausnog/attachments/20140722/d37fc927/attachment.html>