yesthattom: (Default)
[personal profile] yesthattom
Is there a technical or legal definition of what makes an ISP "Tier 1"?

Someone is trying to claim to me that Paetec is a Tier 1 provider. I disagree, but I don't have a way to express it.

Date: 2004-06-02 09:35 pm (UTC)
mangosteen: (Default)
From: [personal profile] mangosteen
In my view, the first step is "no transit". They must be able to reach all address space through peering arrangements. Note that a peering arrangement with one side paying the other is almost indistinguishable from transit.

blocks

Date: 2004-06-02 09:38 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] chrisla.livejournal.com
To me:

- If they can route blocks bigger than a class C
- How many hops are they from a backbone router
- Are they directly connected to a peering network
- Are they listed on sites like looking glass, or internet weather

Re: blocks

Date: 2004-06-02 11:58 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] sierra-nevada.livejournal.com
Heh, look at AS 4061. By two definitions, we fit, though we're looking for physically redundant connectivity these days...

Re: blocks

Date: 2004-06-03 05:48 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] sierra-nevada.livejournal.com
ooops. I meant AS 4601, not 4061.

Date: 2004-06-02 09:51 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] rainbear.livejournal.com
Hmm--results from google that seem to make sense:

http://www.nwfusion.com/newsletters/isp/2004/0301isp2.html

http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Tier%201%20carrier

http://www.cctec.com/maillists/nanog/historical/0106/msg00401.html

Date: 2004-06-02 09:52 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] rainbear.livejournal.com
Oops and this one:

http://www.t1price.net/tier-1-tier-2-providers.html

Date: 2004-06-02 10:30 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] xeger.livejournal.com
I suppose a response of "I've never heard of them" is overly egotistical :)

There's a very small number of Tier-1 ISPs. I suppose some metrics would include "Your packets almost certainly transit one to get anywhere", "Have a global high speed backbone, which runs at currently fast speeds [OC-192+]" (often owned, sometimes rented) - further discussion suggests that the amount of traffic carried by the network, the amount of transit traffic, and the number of peers [different providers], and number of peering points... as well as the capacity and actual peak bandwidth rate.

Ergh. If you look at: http://www.paetec.com/2_1/2_1_5__2.html [it's a silly animated thing, at that], Paetec definitely doesn't qualify. Not only are they US only, but they have next to nothing in terms of redundant routes, pops, or much of anything.

If you look at Level 3 [http://www.level3.com/577.html], or Global Crossing [http://www.globalcrossing.com/xml/network/net_map.xml], you'll notice that the maps maps are much, much richer.

Here are the top 10 networks in the world in order of size:
Company AS Peers
MCI 701 2440
Sprint 1239 1792
ATT 7018 1666
Qwest 209 868
Level3 3356 851
C&W 3561 680
GBLX 3549 630
Verio 2914 568
Abovenet6461 523
Genuity 1 329

Consider Paetec: http://www.fixedorbit.com/AS/15/AS15270.htm seems to be their main AS, with http://www.fixedorbit.com/AS/13/AS13678.htm as a subsiduary.

... and then look at MCI/UUNET: http://www.fixedorbit.com/AS/0/AS701.htm

So, er, no.

Date: 2004-06-02 10:36 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] rainbear.livejournal.com
As an aside... if you have a choice.. I was _very_ pleased with Savvis. When they had any outages, I got called. When we had any (even brief) outages, like having to reboot the 7006, they'd call to make sure everything was ok, and wanted to know if they could help. They were also not all that horribly priced, given the service we got from them. [They were cheaper by a few hundred dollars a month compared to our uuNet link.]

Date: 2004-06-02 11:14 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] xeger.livejournal.com
Heh. Win some, lose some. I haven't been all that impressed with Savvis. Regularly fouled up DNS in various ways, could be relied upon to make sure that any maintenance touching them took at -least- 2x longer than it should have... and still use [of all things] Bay Networks gear as CPE. Pthek.

Date: 2004-06-03 04:13 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] cpj.livejournal.com
The semi-unofficial definition I've always used is that a Tier-1 provider is one of the guys that carries the majority of IP traffic to most large destinations: Global Crossing, BBN, SBC, Qwest. I forget the rest. These guys don't connect to major backbone networks, because they are considered the backbone networks.

If they're trying to sell you service, you probably don't want a Tier-1 provider. It becomes risky if that provider suffers a catastrophic failure.

Find a Tier-2 provider that connects to multiple Tier-1 providers. That way you get automatic network diversity.

Date: 2004-06-03 04:15 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] g-martin-blank.livejournal.com
The original definition of Tier 1 was quite simple: Owned/Operated your own mationwide backbone with public Peering at MAE East, MAE West, the NYNap, and the Commercial Internet eXchange. Now, the definition does include "No transit routing" as part of the deal.

If you are old-school, your Tier 1s are UUNet, Sprint, Savvis (they bought Cable & Wireless), Genuity (BBN) XO (the new owners of DIGEX)and Covad (PSI).

These days, I look at www.caida.org - their most recent skitter map has the best view of the peering relationships.

Gary

Date: 2004-06-03 05:13 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] rmd.livejournal.com
Is there a technical or legal definition of what makes an ISP "Tier 1"?

nope.

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