Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Hurricane Electric 3D network map

he.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 38 posts

Re: Hurricane Electric 3D network map

#11

Post by deskamess »

kev009 wrote: post #2

It doesn't have the flash in the pan moment of sucesss like a unicorn startup but these guys will make billions some day due to all the peering agreements and interconnect (most the long haul is probably leased), especially as IPv6 takes majority prominence in the coming years. Excellent slow burner kind of business and smart customer acquisition through low pricing and easy turn-ups.

How exactly does one purchase their solution? Or more exactly what is being purchased? Do you place your servers on their rack in various data centers, and then have access to their backbone at cheap rates?

Re: Hurricane Electric 3D network map

#12

Post by walrus01 »

deskamess wrote: post #11
kev009 wrote: post #2

It doesn't have the flash in the pan moment of sucesss like a unicorn startup but these guys will make billions some day due to all the peering agreements and interconnect (most the long haul is probably leased), especially as IPv6 takes majority prominence in the coming years. Excellent slow burner kind of business and smart customer acquisition through low pricing and easy turn-ups.

How exactly does one purchase their solution? Or more exactly what is being purchased? Do you place your servers on their rack in various data centers, and then have access to their backbone at cheap rates?

HE is a major "IP transit" provider, if you're a small to medium sized ISP, they are one of your choices in the market for buying absolutely necessary transit to reach other parts of the Internet. Grossly simplified, you as a tiny ISP get your own AS, and at least a /24 of RIPE, APNIC or ARIN IP space, set up your own router, and announce your AS and IP space to HE over a BGP session with them. Usually via a singlemode fiber crossconnect from within the same carrier hotel or datacenter.

Or if you're a colo/dedicated server company you can use them as an upstream. They also sell layer 2 transport services (built over MPLS) between any two of their POPs, for ISPs that want to establish a new POP somewhere and get 10 or 100Gbps connectivity between them.

Re: Hurricane Electric 3D network map

#13

Post by amaccuish »

walrus01 wrote: post #10
virtuallynathan wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just HE.net's network (with an overlay of submarine cables globally), very few if any US or EU based network operators have network presences in Russia or China (perhaps with the exception of Moscow and St Petersburg).

If you look at the european POPs of major eastern european and Russian ISPs, everything in Russia that counts as a major carrier or ISP has established a presence at DE-CIX Frankfurt. The various buildings in Frankfurt that house DE-CIX switches are full of PNIs between big ISPs.

> If you look at the european POPs of major eastern european and Russian ISPs

Can confirm. (Source) When I studied in Russia, my host's father happened to be a network engineer for a big ISP in Russia.

Re: Hurricane Electric 3D network map

#14

Post by throwaway2048 »

rayiner wrote: post #6
kev009 wrote: post #2

It doesn't have the flash in the pan moment of sucesss like a unicorn startup but these guys will make billions some day due to all the peering agreements and interconnect (most the long haul is probably leased), especially as IPv6 takes majority prominence in the coming years. Excellent slow burner kind of business and smart customer acquisition through low pricing and easy turn-ups.

Probably not. This is a pretty competitive space, which pushes prices towards marginal costs.

They offer service in lots of cities where there are few, if any alternatives at their price point. For instance, in western Canada, the closest alterantives at most of their POP cities charge literally 10x to 100x as much

Re: Hurricane Electric 3D network map

#15

Post by rsync »

We (rsync.net) use he.net bandwidth in three of our locations - one of which is the core he.net datacenter in Fremont (which used to be an Apple Computer manufacturing facility).

The reason I originally sought out he.net to work with was their continued operation of irc.lightning.net. The MOTD on lightning referred to their network and was written in a way that made me believe they were highly technical, clueful people - I have not been disappointed.

Re: Hurricane Electric 3D network map

#16

Post by devereaux »

rsync wrote: post #15

We (rsync.net) use he.net bandwidth in three of our locations - one of which is the core he.net datacenter in Fremont (which used to be an Apple Computer manufacturing facility). The reason I originally sought out he.net to work with was their continued operation of irc.lightning.net. The MOTD on lightning referred to their network and was written in a way that made me believe they were highly technical, clueful peop…

+1.

My interactions with HE, from customer service to sales have always been excellent.

Also, they are technical. They know networking. You can use the right words, and they will understand. It is a nice change compared to other companies.

HE may be more expansive, but they are worth every extra cent.

Re: Hurricane Electric 3D network map

#17

Post by [deleted] »

rsync wrote: post #15

We (rsync.net) use he.net bandwidth in three of our locations - one of which is the core he.net datacenter in Fremont (which used to be an Apple Computer manufacturing facility). The reason I originally sought out he.net to work with was their continued operation of irc.lightning.net. The MOTD on lightning referred to their network and was written in a way that made me believe they were highly technical, clueful peop…

[deleted]

Re: Hurricane Electric 3D network map

#18

Post by toomuchtodo »

walrus01 wrote: post #9
virtuallynathan wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just HE.net's network (with an overlay of submarine cables globally), very few if any US or EU based network operators have network presences in Russia or China (perhaps with the exception of Moscow and St Petersburg).

This is a topology diagram at layer 3 for their BGP / ipv4 and ipv6 network - nobody should confuse it with OSI layer 1 cable reality for where routes physically are, except at the most gross level of detail (POP in Paris is linked to POP in London, for example).

Somewhat related: OSI Layer 1 map: https://dev.networkatlas.org/

Re: Hurricane Electric 3D network map

#19

Post by dsl »

corint wrote: post #4
kev009 wrote: post #2

It doesn't have the flash in the pan moment of sucesss like a unicorn startup but these guys will make billions some day due to all the peering agreements and interconnect (most the long haul is probably leased), especially as IPv6 takes majority prominence in the coming years. Excellent slow burner kind of business and smart customer acquisition through low pricing and easy turn-ups.

Please forgive my ignorant question, but if they're already peering with a lot of networks, why would those networks change to paying for transit from them? Or do you think they'd start to steal paying transit customers away from some of the larger T1 networks?

When you peer with HE, you only get their paying customers routes. If you buy transit from HE, you get routes to the entire internet (and your routes go out to their peers).

Peering costs them little (they just have to backhaul to a customer that is paying them anyway), for transit they may have to pay Comcast, Sprint, or another provider to reach the networks they are not directly connected to.

Post reply on HN