5 ms·

I wonder what that same 1 TB of data costs on the "open market" (or how it is even priced). Say I'm a smallish ISP on the east coast and want to send 1 TB to a

I wonder what that same 1 TB of data costs on the "open market" (or how it is even priced). Say I'm a smallish ISP on the east coast and want to send 1 TB to another smallish ISP on the west coast. I probably have a contract with, I don't know, AT&T or whoever owns the cables (I'm from Europe so I have no clue, in Germany it would be Telekom). I'm guessing it would probably cost cents (and that would bring my data across the continent, not just out Google's door)? Definitely nowhere near $80.

wmf 9y ago
1 TB = $35. https://www.packetfabric.com/pricing/ https://www.packetfabric.com/pricing/
- jlg23 9y ago
  Intentionally not linking to any of the companies I found with just a quick search at google (mislaid the PDF for carrier 2 carrier pricing of a major provider): 40E/month for 30TB traffic, 1G uplink (1G/s guaranteed), 2x500G SSD on a i7.
Veratyr 9y ago
You don't buy bytes, you buy pipes. Typically, you buy say 1Gbit of transit and you can put as much or as little data through that pipe as you want. You can get a gigabit pipe from Hurricane Electric or FDCServers for $400/month. In a month it can take 327TB of data, so the cost of 1TB is ~$1.20.
- DisposableMike 9y ago
  Curious - at what POP have you been quoted $400/month for a gigabit connection from HE?
  - posguy 9y ago
    Its not a quote, but a well known, long running cabinet special for 42u (aka a dedicated full rack) and 15 amps of power: https://he.net/special.pdf https://he.net/special.pdf Other datacenters can go cheaper if you need less rackspace and power, bandwidth is cheap!
    - DisposableMike 9y ago
      Looks like this one is specifically for the Fremont 2 data center (though like you said, I imagine it's possible elsewhere or comparable). Thanks!
nik736 9y ago
In the open market you either get transit (you buy bandwidth from a carrier) or peer (you exchange traffic with a provider) with other networks. There are also IXs, where you can peer with a lot of different networks in one place (DE-CIX is the biggest for example, located in Frankfurt). Transit is billed 95th percentile, that means if you want to commit to 1 GbE on a 10 GbE uplink you pay the 1 GbE outright and can burst to the 10 GbE the uplink provides you. If you are over 1 GbE at the end of the month (95th) you will be billed the remaining mbps with a per mbps pricing. Now, to answer your question, it basically works like that: You are present in NYC and you want to reach a customer on the west coast that uses Comcast. You would buy transit in your NYC facility from Comcast to get a direct path/way to them. They will take care of everything else. You don't have to lease/rent/buy the dark fibre (cables) from the east to the west coast, the provider (in this case comcast) is doing that already. If you don't buy transit from comcast, but instead form some cheap carrier (say cogent) they will do the same BUT not guarantee a specific bandwidth to comcast, you only would get 10 GbE to cogent, but you don't know if you can push the 10 GbE to comcast. Transit providers also vary vastly on price. DTAG (Telekom) for example is ridiculously expensive (5x the prices of regular transit providers). Let's say you want an decent pipe (transit) with 1 GbE commit on 10 GbE, you would pay something like $500-$600 for the 1 GbE commit and after that around $0,50 per every additional mbps. Additionally you need a router, preferably two (redundancy). Fiber cables, transceivers, etc. All those things are very expensive. What you also notice is that you can't get transit with a TB billing, but most providers offer you per GB/TB billing. They need to commit to a certain amount and hope they calculated well in regards to their commitments and usage etc etc. Anyways, $80-120 per TB, the cloud providers are charging, is a bad joke.
- niklasrde 9y ago
  1GbE over 1 month is about 330TB - is that right?
  - nik736 9y ago
    Yes, but it's basically impossible to do so with 95th percentile.
zzzcpan 9y ago
With enough competition a smallish ISP would pay as low as $0.25-$0.40 per mbps per month, which is on an order of $1 per TB. More expensive offers are like $1-$2 per mbps per month, which is still a single digit per TB.

wmf 9y ago

1 TB = $35. https://www.packetfabric.com/pricing/ https://www.packetfabric.com/pricing/

jlg23 9y ago
Intentionally not linking to any of the companies I found with just a quick search at google (mislaid the PDF for carrier 2 carrier pricing of a major provider): 40E/month for 30TB traffic, 1G uplink (1G/s guaranteed), 2x500G SSD on a i7.

Veratyr 9y ago

You don't buy bytes, you buy pipes. Typically, you buy say 1Gbit of transit and you can put as much or as little data through that pipe as you want. You can get a gigabit pipe from Hurricane Electric or FDCServers for $400/month. In a month it can take 327TB of data, so the cost of 1TB is ~$1.20.

DisposableMike 9y ago
Curious - at what POP have you been quoted $400/month for a gigabit connection from HE?
- posguy 9y ago
  Its not a quote, but a well known, long running cabinet special for 42u (aka a dedicated full rack) and 15 amps of power: https://he.net/special.pdf https://he.net/special.pdf Other datacenters can go cheaper if you need less rackspace and power, bandwidth is cheap!
  - DisposableMike 9y ago
    Looks like this one is specifically for the Fremont 2 data center (though like you said, I imagine it's possible elsewhere or comparable). Thanks!

nik736 9y ago

In the open market you either get transit (you buy bandwidth from a carrier) or peer (you exchange traffic with a provider) with other networks. There are also IXs, where you can peer with a lot of different networks in one place (DE-CIX is the biggest for example, located in Frankfurt). Transit is billed 95th percentile, that means if you want to commit to 1 GbE on a 10 GbE uplink you pay the 1 GbE outright and can burst to the 10 GbE the uplink provides you. If you are over 1 GbE at the end of the month (95th) you will be billed the remaining mbps with a per mbps pricing. Now, to answer your question, it basically works like that: You are present in NYC and you want to reach a customer on the west coast that uses Comcast. You would buy transit in your NYC facility from Comcast to get a direct path/way to them. They will take care of everything else. You don't have to lease/rent/buy the dark fibre (cables) from the east to the west coast, the provider (in this case comcast) is doing that already. If you don't buy transit from comcast, but instead form some cheap carrier (say cogent) they will do the same BUT not guarantee a specific bandwidth to comcast, you only would get 10 GbE to cogent, but you don't know if you can push the 10 GbE to comcast. Transit providers also vary vastly on price. DTAG (Telekom) for example is ridiculously expensive (5x the prices of regular transit providers). Let's say you want an decent pipe (transit) with 1 GbE commit on 10 GbE, you would pay something like $500-$600 for the 1 GbE commit and after that around $0,50 per every additional mbps. Additionally you need a router, preferably two (redundancy). Fiber cables, transceivers, etc. All those things are very expensive. What you also notice is that you can't get transit with a TB billing, but most providers offer you per GB/TB billing. They need to commit to a certain amount and hope they calculated well in regards to their commitments and usage etc etc. Anyways, $80-120 per TB, the cloud providers are charging, is a bad joke.

niklasrde 9y ago
1GbE over 1 month is about 330TB - is that right?
- nik736 9y ago
  Yes, but it's basically impossible to do so with 95th percentile.

zzzcpan 9y ago

With enough competition a smallish ISP would pay as low as $0.25-$0.40 per mbps per month, which is on an order of $1 per TB. More expensive offers are like $1-$2 per mbps per month, which is still a single digit per TB.