When it comes to IP transit, the differences between providers can be dramatic - and choosing the wrong one can mean higher latency, more congestion, and unexpected costs.
Not all IP transit providers are created equal. While price is often the first thing network operators look at when evaluating transit options, it can be one of the least important factors if the underlying network quality and peering relationships don't meet your needs.
What makes a great IP transit provider?
1. Network Footprint and Peering: A transit provider's value is heavily determined by the quality and breadth of their peering relationships. Providers that peer with major content delivery networks (CDNs) and content providers at multiple internet exchange points (IXPs) can deliver traffic more efficiently, with lower latency and fewer hops.
2. Route Diversity and Redundancy: The best transit providers maintain multiple diverse paths to ensure that traffic can be rerouted quickly in the event of a network issue. Look for providers with multiple Tier 1 upstream connections and diverse physical infrastructure.
3. Latency and Performance: Raw bandwidth is meaningless if the underlying network adds unnecessary latency. Evaluate potential providers by running traceroutes to your key traffic destinations and comparing latency profiles.
4. Scalability: Your transit provider needs to grow with you. Look for providers that can scale bandwidth quickly and offer flexible commitment options that won't lock you into capacity you don't yet need.
5. Support and SLAs: When network issues occur, response time matters. Evaluate the quality of a provider's NOC (Network Operations Center) and their contractual commitments around uptime, response times, and issue resolution.
6. Pricing Structure: While not the only factor, pricing matters. Understand whether pricing is based on 95th percentile billing, flat rate, or burstable models, and choose the structure that best aligns with your traffic patterns.
How Capcon Networks helps
Capcon Networks works with a curated portfolio of IP transit providers to deliver blended transit solutions that optimize performance and cost. Rather than committing to a single provider, Capcon uses BGP routing to intelligently distribute traffic across multiple providers, leveraging the best paths for different traffic types and destinations. This approach delivers the redundancy of multiple providers with the simplicity of a single managed service.