
Ask HN: Do big companies like Apple, Google, Microsoft pay for Internet data? - hoodoof
I, and my company, have to pay for Internet data usage.<p>Do big companies also have to?
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matheweis
Companies that own their own infrastructure; e.g. literally the fiber across
town, may only need to pay the peering fees. Some of the peering sites in the
US are non profit, and as such these companies that own their own
infrastructure are able to connect at-cost, or even at no cost [1].

I have no doubt that large companies take advantage of the above fact to get
their internet "free" [2].

Now, there are still very significant costs in getting fiber to the peering
sites, whether they trench it or lease it, and there are also the costs of the
higher end routers, engineers to maintain them, etc. So, probably it is more
cost effective to buy "regular" internet services for many small to medium
office locations.

There is a decent article in Wired [2009] that explains how Google likely
leverages all this to significantly reduce their bandwidth costs for YouTube
[2].

[1] - [http://www.phoenix-ix.net/aboutus.html](http://www.phoenix-
ix.net/aboutus.html)

[2] - [http://www.wired.com/2009/10/youtube-
bandwidth/](http://www.wired.com/2009/10/youtube-bandwidth/)

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dripton
See
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tier_1_network](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tier_1_network)

Tier 1 means you're so central (at least in most of the world -- countries
with local telco monopolies might be exceptions) that there is nobody upstream
of you; everyone else is either a customer (who pays you) or a peer.

None of the companies you mention are Tier 1, so they're all paying someone
upstream for at least some of their traffic. Every big company has people
working to reduce that cost. For example, Apple and Microsoft might decide to
peer with each other in some areas, and carry each other's traffic for free
rather than paying someone else to carry it. And we know Google has invested
significantly in their own fiber.

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j3_d1
Seperate the big companies into two groups. Those that provide content & those
that don't.

The companies who provide content are more appealing to the end user and so
Tier 1 IP providers will be interested in allowing them to host CDN platforms
on the edge and connect into their networks so even if they do pay, it will be
a very competitive rate. Then peering agreements will reduce the requirement
for purchasing IP even more.

Companies who don't provide content but are huge, will have a department
specifically for negotiating competitive rates & will again take advantage of
peering in a big way.

Dark fibre is a different product to IP transit but again, negotiation teams
will work to get huge discount.

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olalonde
I don't know the details but those Wikipedia articles might help:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peering](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peering)
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_exchange_point](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_exchange_point)

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exelius
Yes, they do. They purchase access from commercial telcos. Even in cases where
they operate their own equipment, they will lease dark fiber from a telecom.

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bitshepherd
Some companies will set up their own internal MPLS network, and it starts
making sense when you grow to a certain size.

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blhack
Do you mean like the offices that they have, or the datacenters that they run?

In both cases, the answer is yes.

