Tier Zero (was Re: Tier 2 - Lease?)

On 5/5/06, Peter Cohen <peteratteliagmail.com> wrote:
> Hopefully this comes out clearly, as writing can be
more confusing
> than speaking...
> Are you getting at Inter AS /SLA/QOS that you would get
from transit
> vs. best effort peering?   Even that has some issues,
the one that
> jumps out to me is hopefully clearly stick
figure-diagrammed below:
>
> AS#x $--SLA-->Transit  ok...
> But...
> AS#x $--SLA-->Transit <second
hop)--Customers/Peers---No Qos/SLA--->
>
> My point is it is hard to do anything beyond the first
AS# for any SLA
> that you would be paying,

You can't *guarantee* better service once the packet leaves
your
provider's upstream ASs.  However, there are
hardware-appliance and
connectivity vendors who make it their job to come very
close, as long
as the far-end network has at least one good, near-end
reachable path.
That's where the concept of route control (where BGP, with
all the
modern weighting frills, is not the final arbiter of route
decisions)
comes into play.  Extending that concept, if *both* ends
have some
sort of route control in place, via the same vendor or not,
you're
even more likely to get good service quality even if the SFI
providers
in the middle suck at any given time.

(ObAdvertisingSquelch:  I have direct involvement in this
subject, so
I won't discuss vendor names on-list to avoid conflict of
interest.)

--
-- Todd Vierling <tvduh.org> <tvpobox.com> <toddvierling.name>