Matthew,
My few cents on your questions:
Since there are extension switches for some of these other IXes in Minneapolis, often times the cost is far less than the wavelength, a term contract is not even needed, and by having multiple people sharing the cost of an extension, sometimes it can cover the cost of diverse waves (I have been surprised at how often a wave will go down, when you have thousands of miles of fiber, a lot can go wrong)
I personally use prepends, and MEDs to manipulate traffic paths. Many of the CDNs have complicated algorithms that go far beyond BGP, and factor in things like load on the cache, geo-location of the IP, and latency.
As for the Chicago problem, I still see my upstreams all trying to take me there. This gives me an option to go the other direction. After the diverse content, the second reason I peer at other exchanges is I have a direct relationship with the peer, so I cutout the delays/red tape of working with an upstream to resolve the issue. Not to mention I can avoid if the upstream gets into a pissing match about who they will/won't peer with, and it causes their links to saturate.
Jeremy
From: MICE Discuss [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Matthew Beckwell
Sent: Friday, October 27, 2017 3:02 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [MICE-DISCUSS] Multi-IX Traffic Management?
For my own curiosity:
I've seen quite a few networks in the last year or so connecting themselves to other out-of-market IX's (I presume getting some cheap wavelengths and bringing it back to Minnesota).
A couple of questions for those of you that are doing this:
1. I'm assuming this is enabling you to accommodate requirements from other networks that require peering at multiple locations, even though technically your network doesn't really extend that far (or maybe it's something else?).
2. How are folks monitoring, managing, or manipulating this out-of-market traffic? (Using BGP MED, Prepending, Localpref, or some other mechanism to "prefer" your traffic enter and exit closer to where you really are?)
I've seen some funny business with these kinds of network arrangements. Google DNS responses coming from SIX......CloudFlare cache response coming from Omaha IX.
It seems like it's "the Chicago problem" (that MICE was founded to avoid) all over again-- except this time around we're doing it with private links all over the country instead of public transit?
Just curious what people have found to be best practices with this type of arrangement.
~Matthew
To unsubscribe from the MICE-DISCUSS list, click the following link:
http://lists.iphouse.net/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=MICE-DISCUSS&A=1