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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?

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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.

Or in many cases they backhaul it around the world and pass it off where they have settlement-free peering. A exotic POP means little with HE unless they pick local transit too and manage to peer with eyeball networks directly.

It's possible some T1 networks may transit them for v6 as that continues to grow in usage but the largest opportunity for HE is being the highest degree v6 carrier, regardless if their v6 backbone gets labeled T1 or T2.

I don't quite know if I think they'd start raking in the billions but I think they have better long term prospects than other large scale providers at the moment.

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