Curious thing, the CEO of my company called me the other
day and was worried about who we were peering with.
It seems someone put a bug in his ear that the larger
providers were about to start charging some of the smaller
providers for bilateral peering.
I haven't heard anything about that at all... so either
a) the ceo is mistaken
b) I've missed some important annoucement recently
either is possible.
Has anyone else heard anything about this?
Thanks,
davec
I haven't heard anything about that at all... so either
a) the ceo is mistaken
b) I've missed some important annoucement recently
either is possible.
Has anyone else heard anything about this?
This has been mentioned/suggested multiple times in the past on the NANOG
list and also in passing in talks at the last NANOG meeting in Ann Arbor.
There is atleast one major player (I forget who, we didn't care to pay)
that does offer a peering only service for those networks that haven't
managed to negotiate peering with them.
Peering is frequently an exercise in posturing and politics by the wooed
peers (especially the larger ones). People from the larger networks
frequently say things in public (for example at NANOG) that are the way
they wish things were as opposed to how they are.
Since your traffic gets to any non peer via transit it simply becomes a
question of money and capacity planning whether you care to pay for any
specific peering session.
Extra commentary follows...
I believe the strategic marketing reason to peer with a competing network
is that it increases the value of your network relative to the rest of the
marketplace (the networks other than this specific peer) more than the
opportunity cost of increasing the value of this specific peer's network.
If you view your network as a majority market share holder you don't have
much reason to peer from a strategic marketing point of view.
Of course another reason you peer with other networks is if you believe
your mission is to provide the best connectivity and least number of hops
possible vs. customer dollars spent, but this depends on what you think
your customers want.
Mike.
+------------------- H U R R I C A N E - E L E C T R I C -------------------+
I don't think anyone has actually started charging "settlements" which is
what your CEO is probably talking about. It's been a rumor for quite a
while that settlement based peering will happen. Very similar to how the
utilities companies manage "traffic". You would count bits into your
network from peer X and he would count bits from your network, whoever has
the lowest number has to pay the difference. So, if you are a small
provider, your going to have to pay the big boys to carry your customers
traffic. Welcome to the new Internet, where the bottom line is the
driving factor. Especially since the margins are so low and no-one has
made any money yet (will we ever?).
Since some of the larger vendors (Cisco mostly) has introduced accounting
features into their software settlements could start any time. It's just
a matter of time until someone actually announces it.. who will jump
first? I have my guess but I don't think I want to announce it publicly.
Eric
I don't think anyone has actually started charging "settlements" which is
what your CEO is probably talking about. It's been a rumor for quite a
while that settlement based peering will happen. Very similar to how the
utilities companies manage "traffic". You would count bits into your
network from peer X and he would count bits from your network, whoever has
the lowest number has to pay the difference. So, if you are a small
provider, your going to have to pay the big boys to carry your customers
traffic. Welcome to the new Internet, where the bottom line is the
driving factor. Especially since the margins are so low and no-one has
made any money yet (will we ever?).
A good reference on financial issues in peering models is
http://iepg.org/settlements.html, a paper by Geoff Huston.