Tactic 3. The Group Buy-In
When @Home went bankrupt it left in its wake a dozen or so cable companies that were left to find Internet service for their customers in thirty days! Very quickly they learned that transit was very expensive, particularly as the file sharing (Kazaa, morpheus, Napster) consumed 40% of all available transit bandwidth. I spent time getting acquainted with this community to find a clear and compelling aligned interest – they each could save millions of dollars per year if they passed this traffic between each other in peering relationships at an IXP.
As a group, the North American Cable companies converged on an IXP, providing that IXP with a huge gravitational pull. The cable companies were “Open Peers,” so generally speaking, they were willing to offload as much traffic as possible with anyone at the IXP. This group buy-in tactic helped build a strong critical mass and increase the value for the IXP populations in which they participated. This tactic, shown graphically in Figure 13-4, can be a very effective startup tactic.
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
Also, most European IXPs were started by a group of ISPs that recognized the shared benefits of IXPs and organized them as formal not-for-profit associations. This ownership and stewardship model is an effective way to build an IXP to critical mass. The value of the IXP is immediately proportional to the value of the routes available from these founding members.
\Figure 13-4. Group Buy-In.