Q: DrPeering -

We need to expand our network into different parts of the world now. We are getting complaints of packet loss, high latency, and are not serving our customers in these regions very well.

How do I decide which regions to build into, and what help is available in making these decisions and scheduling that deployment?

Captain Steve Rogers

A:

Captain Rogers -

Thanks for that question. This is been coming up a lot lately, and I'll tell you what I have been advising folks.

First, the exchange point operators in the region are going to be very helpful in identifying which transport providers can get you into the exchange point. The better sites include a list of all the fiber providers and carriers that offer services into their Exchange Point, along with the e-mail addresses and phone numbers of the person you can contact to find out how much it will cost to build in and when they can deliver capacity.

So I would start with contacts at the exchange points in the regions of interest. While you're at it, ask them about colocation fees, peering port fees, time to install, the methods used for deployment, power and maybe even latency to various destinations.  Leverage these free resources - the good exchange points are more than happy to help. The exchange points that don’t help much during pre-sales, will likely not help much more after you sign their contract.

As to the decision of which region to expand into, and which Internet Exchange Point to choose, the most common selection criteria are listed here.

I would probably concentrate first on the goals of the deployment. You said you are looking to decrease latency, and control routing to minimize packet loss. To this end, I would suggest that you take measurements of the latency from various parts of the world where you are (and locations that you might want to be) to the destination that you are trying to serve. You are trying to get a reasonable match between the cost of deployment options, and the latency improvement that you get by building out. For example, if you go to a place like Japan in order to service a market in India you will find it a fairly expensive deployment and latency will be about the same as if you deployed to lower cost Hong Kong location in order to serve traffic to India.

If you have time, attend some regional peering forums and IX member meetings if they allow you to attend as a member prospect. You can get really good ground truth from the people deployed in the area.

The other avenues. I would also have discussions with Internet service providers that serve the target market well already, and consider sending traffic through them to get to that destination. I'm not saying do not deploy into the new market, but it is definitely worthwhile having a conversation about the cost and the reach.

Remote Peering. Consider also the option of expanding your peering over a long transport circuit. There are pro’s and con’s here of course, but some people have had luck with this method.

This isn’t everything but I would say that these are a few of the high order bits surrounding this topic.

I hope this helps.

DrPeering@DrPeering.net