Tactic 1. Bluff the Size of the Population
“All war is based on deceit.”
– Sun Tzu, “The Art of War”
Observation: The IXP business has a range of deceit.
Bluff carriers. Frustrated IXPs dealing with the Startup Hump often employ tactics to signal greater value to peering prospects. One of the founders of the PAIX spoke at an APRICOT conference in the late 1990s describing their startup phase; the company needed to persuade the large carriers to build in to the PAIX facility in downtown Palo Alto. The PAIX founder contacted Pacific Bell and said that WorldCom was generating significant revenue from the PAIX population and that the customer base would like a choice in carriers. Not wanting to give up business to WorldCom, Pacific Bell built into the PAIX. WorldCom, of course, was not in the building at the time, but when Pacific Bell showed up and started selling capacity, WorldCom was contacted to come in and compete. Once these two carriers were in the building, the population of carriers and ISPs was able to grow.
Value of the IXP = f(p, r, v, m) - c
p: The population
r: The routes available
v: The volume of traffic exchanged
m: The market perception of the IXP
c: The cost of participatioon at the IXP
Bluff two potential peers. Some ISPs have used these same tactics to attract customers; they identify potential peers that a prospect would like to peer with and signal that these peers are there or “pretty close” to installing. The prospect’s desired potential peers are then also targeted with the same type of signaling in the hope that neither ISP will realize that the other isn’t already installed at the IXP. This tactic often fails, as the peering population is a tight-knit group of professionals who talk to each other for a living. These IXPs lose credibility, and they begin to experience more difficulty building sufficient trust to build momentum out of the Startup Hump.
Another form of this tactic is the signaling of broader peering participation than actually exists. When the NAP of the Americas (NOTA) first launched, its marketing literature included a “Representative Members” list that, to some, implied that this group would be among the peering population. The NOTA was developed by a consortium of ISPs and carriers, and the consortium list was used in the early days to signal support for the NOTA – but their participation was not guaranteed. As a result, some ISPs believed there were more participants in the NOTA than there actually were.
These misleading tactics are common in the IXP sector, particularly during the Startup Hump period. If there is no value to participation, then one has to sell a vision, paint a compelling view of the future of the IXP. Scraps of interest are sometimes crafted into “marketing speak” in the form of “we are in talks with XXX right now,” or “we should have XXX in by the end of the quarter,” or other such noncommittal phrases. The problem is that the “well-chosen marketing speak” is often repeated by newly hired sales people, but without the same precision, leading to charges of misrepresentation.