gcook@tigger.jvnc.net (Gordon Cook) writes:
> Bill, would you please define what you mean by non transit
> peering and explain what the advantage of such would be?
Time for ASCII art (oh nooooooo!)...
+---------+ +------------+ +----------+
> > > > > >
> Net99 +----+ MAE West +----+ Sprint |
> > > > > >
+----+----+ +-------+----+ +-----+----+
\ : \
\ : \
\ : \
+----------+ +-------+------+ +---+---+ +----+-----+
> > > > > > > >
> Aimnet +-----+ Mainstreet +------+ PCH +------+ Zocalo |
> > > > > > > >
+----------+ +-------+------+ +-------+ +----+-----+
/ /
/ /
/ /
+-------+------+ +-----+------+
> > > >
> Mainstreet | | Zocalo |
> Customer | | Customer |
> > > >
+--------------+ +------------+
Okay, that's me over on the far right-hand side. I'm paying for
transit through Sprint. I'm paying a nominal flat-rate to hold up my
share of the facilities for my connection into PCH, and I'm not paying
anything to any of the other PCH members.
PCH maintains a no-settlement peering policy by not having members do
transit across it... To use the example above, Mainstreet advertizes
a route to themeselves and to their customers to all the other PCH
peers, but they don't advertize a route to Net99 or Aimnet. Likewise,
I advertize routes to my customers, but not to Sprint. Thus any
traffic I have for any PCH peers or their customers goes directly to
them, but anything to anyone who's not a PCH peer goes out through my
paid-transit connection.
So what we'd like to do is peer with larger ISPs. We know that
individually we're small-fry, and that we'd never stand a chance of
getting Sprint, MCI, etc. to join on the same basis as little ISPs,
but collectively we can put one router on MAE West and potentially one
on the S.F. NAP. What we'd like to do is offer up all our routes
together on that router for peering with other ISPs at the MAE, but
since we'd still be smaller than most of them, even banded together,
we'd offer to give up transit (i.e. if MCI agreed to peer with us
there, we'd agree never to dump traffic _through_ MCI to MAE East;
we'd only use MCI to reach MCI's customers) in exchange for a
no-settlement peering agreement, just as we use among ourselves.
Why this is _should_ be attractive to larger ISPs 
is that it
means they themselves should actually have to carry less traffic. If
they choose to peer with us, they can dump traffic directly into each
of us via PCH. If they don't peer with us, they have to use a transit
carrier (Sprint to reach me, or Net99 to reach Mainstreet, in the
example above) and pay a settlement to that carrier.
So is anybody up for it, or am I another one of those raving loonies
that make mailing lists so annoying?
-Bill Woodcock
OK, I'll stick my net out and ask as question. Bill says:
Why this is _should_ be attractive to larger ISPs is that it
means they themselves should actually have to carry less traffic. If
they choose to peer with us, they can dump traffic directly into each
of us via PCH. If they don't peer with us, they have to use a transit
carrier (Sprint to reach me, or Net99 to reach Mainstreet, in the
example above) and pay a settlement to that carrier.