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_________
