Re: NANOG67 - Tipping point of community and sponsor bashing?

[Dave Temkin <dave () temk in>]

Hi Nurani,

Much of what you've asked me below is answered up-thread, so I'm not going
to rehash it for the sanity of the others following this discussion. I have
snipped what hasn't been.


On Thu, Jun 16, 2016 at 8:52 AM, Nurani Nimpuno <nurani () netnod se> wrote:

>  I take your point about the Netnod fees (even though I would also like to
> point out that we have actually reduced our other port fees for 100mbps,
> 1G, remote peering). But I’m not sure why you haven’t brought it to us
> directly. Netflix has been at several Netnod meetings in the past, so we
> have had plenty of opportunity to discuss this.

Nothing in my presentation said "Netflix seeks to get better port fees".
You'll find that I, not once, in my deck or oral presentation, mentioned
Netflix. I spoke at length with LINX after the presentation and pointed out
that I seek to help the entire market, not just my employer, better
understand how IXPs price their services, what things are negotiable, and
what things need to change. Call it thinly-veiled, but I didn't even use my
employer slide master - this was geared as a community discussion.


> And I don’t represent a membership-based IXP.

An important distinction. Poring through
http://www.netnod.se/about/documents , there is very little transparency
into the actual operations of NetNod.

>  If you stop adding value to those networks peering at the IX, you will
> slowly become irrelevant.

And therein lies the rub, we (many of us, not just you and I) disagree
about what "adding value" is defined as. I'm glad we can have this
conversation.


> While some think that a good technical solution would sell itself, I
> believe that is a fallacy (not only in the IXP world). Netnod started out
> as a very small IXPs with only a few local operators connected to it. And I
> strongly believe that if we hadn’t done as much outreach as we do, we
> would’ve stayed tiny until this day.

Outreach is fantastic!


> We work in a similar way with our pricing. (You mention that there is a
> lot of negotiations on pricing with IXPs.) I would like to be 100% clear
> that for the Netnod IX, we don’t negotiate or give “sweet deals” to anyone.
> We publish our fee schedule and we stick to it. Whenever someone wants a
> special deal (which happens often, particularly with the larger customers),
> our response is that we treat everyone equally. If you want a cheaper deal,
> then another customer is basically funding your reduction. So we don’t do
> this. We believe this is more fair and transparent.

That's fantastic, and I agree with this approach. And that's why it's
important to make this a community discussion, not a "Netflix and Netnod"
discussion.


> As for a general discussion about costs, service levels and IXPs, I think
> there is a very interesting discussion that could be had with a more
> focused discussion. How do “we” best serve today's very diverse set of
> operators? How does an IXP strike that balance? How do operators best solve
> their interconnection needs (through IXPs, private peering, transit etc)
> and is that changing? What type of interconnection environment do we
> believe best scales Internet growth in the future? What is the total cost
> of interconnection, where are the big costs, what are the different models
> and where is the whole industry moving? Now THOSE are discussions I
> personally would find very valuable!

We agree. I'm really glad that this has sprouted so many threads of
discussion. This seems to have kicked off the discussion within the larger
community beyond just the four examples, and I think that what we've seen
thus far is healthy discourse.