overpriced ports at exchange fabric

[Zitibake]

Last year, I looked into peering at a Chicago peering point. The IX operates a switching fabric to facilitate peering among participants.

I was surprised by the pricing on the peering fabric. GigE ports on the peering fabric were priced at USD $4500/mo., compared with USD $1425/mo in Amsterdam and USD $1266/mo in London (incl. membership).

Is US peering considered 3x the value of EU? Maybe haggling is required in US?

[sailor]

Originally Posted by Zitibake

Last year, I looked into peering at a Chicago peering point. The IX operates a switching fabric to facilitate peering among participants.

I was surprised by the pricing on the peering fabric. GigE ports on the peering fabric were priced at USD $4500/mo., compared with USD $1425/mo in Amsterdam and USD $1266/mo in London (incl. membership).

Is US peering considered 3x the value of EU? Maybe haggling is required in US?

what a deal - 4.50 per meg just to do nothing.........I be those are selling like hotcakes.

[Zitibake]

I think that's the idea (for Equinix not to sell any more Equinix Exchange ports). The business plan may be:
-first, build an economical peering fabric to attract hundreds of networks to your peering point
-critical mass builds, and after 5 years, all the largest networks have been attracted to the colo
-say "thanks for the help, Bill" and retire your peering coordinator
-raise rates on the peering fabric, encouraging private peering. Large networks will be happy to replace the fabric with a moderate number of private cross-connects to other large networks; smaller networks will go away, or become customers of the larger networks.
-The peering fabric can be retired, removing a possible single-point-of-failure from the service portfolio of the colo.