[hhw]

This is not imperative to do in-house. My company (*shameless plug for Astute Internet) has expertise in those areas you describe, and will provide and/or support the edge network infrastructure for small ISP's in exchange for selling them some of those services (we're a mini-carrier and value added reseller) and charging a nominal retainer to be an available path of escalation 24/7. Due to our purchasing volume and industry knowledge, we are able to sell these services for the same or less than what our customers would be able to negotiate on their own, while getting a lot of support from us in the process.

Although this type of knowledge and expertise is rather specialized, we are able to focus on these specific areas without getting involved in the intricacies of the downstream side of our clients' networks, thus avoiding the need for us to have too much client specific or institutional knowledge. This has worked out very well with the handful of eyeball networks we're currently working with in the Pacific Northwest, and we intend to more actively extend this line of business down the coast in the near future.