[1st-mile-nm] Peering, a contrast between New Mexico and the rest of the world.

[John Brown]

Recently we upgraded our connectivity to 1 Wilshire in LAX.  
A nexus of internet providers, end users, content, education, governmental users all interconnecting to make packets work better.

In less than 30 days we have established over 250+ peers.  Many via a public fabric, some via private dedicated inter-connects.

We added 60,000 routes to our network and we can reach those routes WITHOUT having to go via a $$ TRANSIT $$ provider.

Places like the State of Oregon (Yes Martha, the entire state gov.) peered in a matter of a few hours.

UCSD, UCS, Various overseas educational entities (some very well known)  all just showed up and said SURE, here are our technical details.
Let us know when your link is up and we will confirm.

Poof, just like that.


Its funny, in a sad kind of way, that an ISP in New Mexico is better connected to places OUTSIDE of New Mexico.

Better connected to the State of Oregon
University of Southern California
University of California, San Diego
Places in Australia , Germany, UK, etc

Yet our own State of NM, Our """""Leading University""""" (UNM) and others are so mired in politics that this isnt' the case in our own state.  
Same could be said about various ISP's in this state...

If we want to see our state have better connectivity then we need to get past the petty politics and make engineering decisions that are based on sound facts and that IMPROVE our inter-connectivity.
In the face of a disaster, we are better connected to those places OUTSIDE of our state, instead of inside our state.
Shouldn't that be the OTHERWAY AROUND ???

Peering also SAVES MONEY.  IT SAVES THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS!!!!!!


Here are some metrics.

Its 5 router hops from my desktop to the State of Oregon's web site.
	And the packets go via
	Albuquerque
	LAX
	State's Web Server

Its 13 router hops from my desktop to the State of New Mexico's web site
	And the packets go via
	Colorado Springs
	Denver 
	St. Louis
	Chicago
	then to Sprint,
	then to TW Telecom
	then BACK into New Mexico



Lets goto USC.

Its 5 router hops from my desktop to USC's web site

Its 18 (EIGHTEEN) router hops from my desktop to UNM's web site.
And yet UNM is less than 3 miles from my desktop......