[afnog] Peering for Route Analysis

[Todd Underwood]

brian, all,

On Tue, Jun 06, 2006 at 01:53:46PM +0100, Brian Candler wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 06, 2006 at 08:07:56AM -0400, Todd Underwood wrote:
> > > you might explain what this tool would do to benefit folk.
> > 
> > certainly! (obviously, randy already knows all of this, but it's a
> > great question for the community in general).
> 
> But pardon me just for clarifying this: 

not at all.  it's important to get these things incredibly clear
up-front.  i appreciate the question.

> the information which you are asking for from African ISPs' routers,
> which you will get for free, you will be reselling to other
> companies?

not exactly.  renesys does offer several commercial services *based*
on the routing data from all of our peers (we have about 130 sessions
right now, including some from africa), but we do not believe that a
single feed of bgp data from a single network has much commercial
value, by itself, at all.  that's why we don't currently have any
customers buying such data.

we could be badly misjudging the market for such things but here is my
current take:  raw bgp data from a single network is pretty much
worthless.  the routes to that network are freely available from a
variety of sources already and having them directly from the source
doesn't add much value for most people.  however, by collecting a
bunch of routing feeds from a bunch of places, it becomes possible to
build very interesting applications that *do* have value.

also, we don't consider that we acquire the bgp data for free.  the
tool that we offer to peers is part of the commercially available tool
suite that we sell access to (for starting prices of around
USD$1000/month).  obviously, it doesn't cost renesys that much money
to offer it to peers, but it clearly has commercial value.

but to be very explicit again:  we do offer commercial services based
on these data.  anyone who does not want to participate because of
that most certainly should not.

thanks for the opportunity to clarify,

t.

-- 
_____________________________________________________________________
todd underwood                                 +1 603 643 9300 x101
renesys corporation                            chief of operations & security 
todd at renesys.com                               http://www.renesys.com/blog/todd.shtml