
Hurricane Electric 3D network map - throwaway2048
https://he.net/3d-map/
======
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.

~~~
devereaux
+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.

~~~
r1ch
Even their free services have great support, I had some non-standard DNS setup
that wasn't possible through their web interface and it was up and running
within a few hours.

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dfc
I really enjoyed the IPv6 "certification" they did. If you have some free time
and have never done any IPv6 networking I highly recommend it:

[https://ipv6.he.net/certification/](https://ipv6.he.net/certification/)

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kev009
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.

~~~
scurvy
There's nothing wrong with leasing transport. Almost all of NTT's network is
leased, and pretty much everyone agrees they're a top flight network.

The thing that makes HE unique is that they only sell full ports. They don't
do fractional billing or 95/5\. You pay for 10gigs on that 10gig circuit,
regardless of use. This leads to networks running HE ports near max load at
peak time. From HE perspective, this is great because it's super easy to plan
for and scale out. You're never surprised by a customer who goes from 3 gigs
to 92 gigs on that 100gig circuit.

~~~
kev009
Never said there's anything wrong with it, it just changes the capital
expenditure and worth from physical to virtual (peering agreements). Companies
like Century Link, AT&T, Verizon are in a slightly different category with
abundant in ground infrastructure (that has extreme tax benefits in the US).

~~~
walrus01
If you look at CAIDA ASRANK, very few of the top-20 ranked ASes in the world,
as ranked by diversity of peering, number of BGP adjacencies, etc also
own/fully control the dark fiber their inter-city router-to-router links are
operating on. They leave that to specialists like Zayo.

Telia has POPs all up and down the US west coast but it's certainly not
_their_ fiber connecting them together.

~~~
ZWoz
If you look globally, then owning fiber everywhere is impossible: there are
countries where legal framework allows one or few specific operators.

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bsder
It's amazing to see all the underwater cabling. That's remarkable.

However, what's with the gigantic holes in interior South America, Africa,
Russia, and China? Is that real or an artifact of their methodology?
(Presumably, the "emptiness" of interior China is due to the fact that
everything is behind the Great Firewall and is hosing their metrics)

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virtuallynathan
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).

~~~
walrus01
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.

~~~
amaccuish
> 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.

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arawde
I still remember my networking professor showing us the HE backbone map and
how blown away I was. This takes it to a whole new level!

