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Note. There is no internet backbone. You pay to peer your traffic.

by sgt101 4y ago

bogomipz 4y ago
There most certainly is an internet backbone. The backbone is the the group of Tier 1 providers in a specific country. Tier 1 providers have settlement-free peering with all the other Tier 1 providers in their country[1][2][3]. At any rate a new ISP wouldn't need to do paid peering they would simply buy transit from a Tier 1 or Tier 2 provider. [1] https://drpeering.net/FAQ/Who-are-the-Tier-1-ISPs.php https://drpeering.net/FAQ/Who-are-the-Tier-1-ISPs.php [2] https://www.thousandeyes.com/learning/techtorials/isp-tiers https://www.thousandeyes.com/learning/techtorials/isp-tiers [3] https://drpeering.net/FAQ/What-is-a-Tier-1-ISP.php https://drpeering.net/FAQ/What-is-a-Tier-1-ISP.php
jcrawfordor 4y ago
A new startup ISP won't be peering, they'll be paying an incumbent provider for at least transit if not full access services (e.g. "dedicated internet access," basically commercial ISP service under contract terms that allow diverse uses including internet services). The term "backbone" is pretty useful here as the number of providers in North America with real global connectivity is fairly small; most ISPs with under thousands of customers are themselves customers of Centurylink/Lumen or Verizon, both of which have been steadily acquiring their competition in core internet connectivity (Level3 for example).
- bcrl 4y ago
  You don't need to buy DIA from an incumbent. You can get L1 / L2 circuits from various carriers back to data centres where you can buy transit and peer with other ISPs using BGP. L1 wavelength circuits did not suffer from the outage Rogers had yesterday, but the downside of wavelengths is that they require physical intervention to recover from failures. For exchanges, Ontario has the Torix exchange in Toronto for peering, and there's QIX in Montreal. Ottawa has Ottix, but it does not have many peers. There are others out west (as I'm in Ontario and don't pay attention to them as much).
  - Scoundreller 4y ago
    Torix has most of the peers you need for a majority of an ISP's traffic. Most consumer traffic is going to be to CDNs (Limelight, Akamai, Cloudflare), AWS, Apple, Google/Youtube, Microsoft, Netflix and the like if you're not big enough to have a private interconnect to them. It turns out the big internet companies like IX's too and don't want backbone providers being gatekeeper.
perlgeek 4y ago
> You pay to peer your traffic. That's not the whole truth. At least here in Germany, there are publicly-ish peering points. You pay a small amount for colocating a single router in the data center, and each peering partner only accepts IP traffic for the IPs they feel responsible for (typically their own AS). Companies such as Google participate in those, so you can offload all of your Google and Youtube traffic at such a peering point. A small ISP can afford to participate in such a peering point, you only pay a fixed, monthly fee for colocation. However, you likely want to also have a carrier to whom you can hand off all the other traffic that you don't have direct peers for. (Source: I work for a company that hosts some of the POPs for https://www.peeringdb.com/ix/135 https://www.peeringdb.com/ix/135)

Note. There is no internet backbone. You pay to peer your traffic.

by sgt101 4y ago

Note. There is no internet backbone. You pay to peer your traffic.

There most certainly is an internet backbone. The backbone is the the group of Tier 1 providers in a specific country. Tier 1 providers have settlement-free peering with all the other Tier 1 providers in their country[1][2][3]. At any rate a new ISP wouldn't need to do paid peering they would simply buy transit from a Tier 1 or Tier 2 provider. [1] https://drpeering.net/FAQ/Who-are-the-Tier-1-ISPs.php https://drpeering.net/FAQ/Who-are-the-Tier-1-ISPs.php [2] https://www.thousandeyes.com/learning/techtorials/isp-tiers https://www.thousandeyes.com/learning/techtorials/isp-tiers [3] https://drpeering.net/FAQ/What-is-a-Tier-1-ISP.php https://drpeering.net/FAQ/What-is-a-Tier-1-ISP.php

jcrawfordor 4y ago

A new startup ISP won't be peering, they'll be paying an incumbent provider for at least transit if not full access services (e.g. "dedicated internet access," basically commercial ISP service under contract terms that allow diverse uses including internet services). The term "backbone" is pretty useful here as the number of providers in North America with real global connectivity is fairly small; most ISPs with under thousands of customers are themselves customers of Centurylink/Lumen or Verizon, both of which have been steadily acquiring their competition in core internet connectivity (Level3 for example).

bcrl 4y ago
You don't need to buy DIA from an incumbent. You can get L1 / L2 circuits from various carriers back to data centres where you can buy transit and peer with other ISPs using BGP. L1 wavelength circuits did not suffer from the outage Rogers had yesterday, but the downside of wavelengths is that they require physical intervention to recover from failures. For exchanges, Ontario has the Torix exchange in Toronto for peering, and there's QIX in Montreal. Ottawa has Ottix, but it does not have many peers. There are others out west (as I'm in Ontario and don't pay attention to them as much).
- Scoundreller 4y ago
  Torix has most of the peers you need for a majority of an ISP's traffic. Most consumer traffic is going to be to CDNs (Limelight, Akamai, Cloudflare), AWS, Apple, Google/Youtube, Microsoft, Netflix and the like if you're not big enough to have a private interconnect to them. It turns out the big internet companies like IX's too and don't want backbone providers being gatekeeper.

perlgeek 4y ago

> You pay to peer your traffic. That's not the whole truth. At least here in Germany, there are publicly-ish peering points. You pay a small amount for colocating a single router in the data center, and each peering partner only accepts IP traffic for the IPs they feel responsible for (typically their own AS). Companies such as Google participate in those, so you can offload all of your Google and Youtube traffic at such a peering point. A small ISP can afford to participate in such a peering point, you only pay a fixed, monthly fee for colocation. However, you likely want to also have a carrier to whom you can hand off all the other traffic that you don't have direct peers for. (Source: I work for a company that hosts some of the POPs for https://www.peeringdb.com/ix/135 https://www.peeringdb.com/ix/135)