[AusNOG] Interstate Networking

[Robert Hudson]

On 21 August 2015 at 15:20, Mark Tees <marktees at gmail.com> wrote:

> I would say there are plenty of providers around that be very competitive
> for MPLS VPNs. MPLS and QOS are easy to add to any business grade ethernet
> tail.
>
> It comes down to whether you want the responsibility of running the core
> network.
>

QoS is a bandaid applied when you have insufficient bandwidth.  I am not
going to run QoS over a 10Gbps link, I simply don't have the need.  If I
get to the point where I need QoS on a 10Gbps link, I actually need a
20Gbps link, or a 40Gbps link, or even higher - and when I control the
speed by the selection of optics rather than what a carrier believes they
should charge me for the privilege, yes, I want that control.

And if by "want the responsibility of running the core network" you mean
"want to be sure that someone working in the carrier NOC doesn't forget to
save the config of the carrier equipment (alas, it's happened far too often
anecdotally over my 20 year history of dealing with carriers to me for me
NOT to consider it an event that occurs reliably every 6 months or so) that
is absolutely relied upon for your link to function but over which you have
absolutely no visibility or authority, and instead you simply act as if
it's a LAN link that happens to span suburbs at a ridiculously high speed
(a speed which I choose simply by selecting optics)", yep, I want that
responsibility, thanks.

Alas, even taking the human error factor out (and recently distributed
stats showed that something like 80% of all errors in computer systems and
networks are directly attributable to human error), there's simply more
equipment to fail/go wrong on a link operated at L2 or above by an outside
party.  On this dark fibre link, the only active equipment is my switches -
which needed to be in place regardless of whether I took a L1, L2 or L3
service - the biggest difference being whether I use optics (and which
ones) or copper ports.

The Sydney-Melbourne aspect of my national WAN was as recently as 18 months
ago costing my employer $10k a month for what was effectively 4Mbps between
the two sites over an MPLS network - today, it's more like $6k for 20Mbps,
and (literally) tomorrow I could get 1Gbps end-to-end between the offices
now (using the model I mentioned before) for less than that $6k a month,
INCLUDING the cost of a new rack in a datacentre at each end, and that
includes 10Gbps between office and datacentre at each end (where the racks
in the datacentre are far more reliable and resilient than I could ever
manage on-premise, and actually cost less to run than running the required
facilities in the office).

The world is changing.
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