Re: Hurricane Electric ISP custom routing via BGP communities

[Mike Lyon <mike.lyon () gmail com>]

Maybe they are trying to recoup those costs they invested in the development.

Hurricane is the LEAST nickel and diming outfit around.  They’re one of the only places i know of that doesn’t charge 
an MRC on cross-connects. 

Between the no MRC on XCs, awesome and responsive tech support, i whole-heartedly recommend them.

If you want some examples of datacenters that nickel and dime you to death, feel free to shoot me an email and i’ll 
share some recent horror stories from another provider…

Cheers,
Mike

> On Nov 4, 2024, at 10:51, Jon Lewis <jlewis () lewis org> wrote:
>
> On Mon, 4 Nov 2024, Jim Troutman wrote:
>
> > It always amazes me how far many Internet engineers, peering coordinators and other buyers will go to haggle every 
> > last nickel on the costs
> > of circuits, crowd connects, space and power. Of course, everyone wants a fair deal and a fair price, myself 
> > included.  But all this
> > infrastructure costs real money to operate.
> > HE is nearly always the least cost transit provider in the markets they serve.  I think that making a lower profit 
> > margin makes
> > it difficult for them to justify investing in the staff time and tooling for BGP communities when the vast majority 
> > of their customers
> > don’t care about it at all. 
> > $200/month extra for BGP community support in the context of what the large “tier 1s” are charging for transit seems 
> > reasonable to me.  If
> > you need it, you actually need it and should pay.  And based on my past experience, the HE NOC response and personal 
> > attention will be
> > superior to nearly anyone else. 
>
> Where this explanation breaks (at least for me) is that since they offer BGP communities features for a fee, they 
> clearly have already put in the time to develop/deploy the config necessary for it, and allowing use of it really 
> doesn't cost them anything.
>
> The additional charge (per circuit) may not be much, but it's nickel and diming, and something I'll try to remember 
> the next time an employer is considering adding HE as a transit.  When shopping for transit in the past, BGP 
> community support has always been a requirement.
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Jon Lewis, MCP :)              |  I route
> Blue Stream Fiber, Sr. Neteng  |  therefore you are
> _________ http://www.lewis.org/~jlewis/pgp for PGP public key_________