The argument about national backbones costing money is a red herring. OF
COURSE they cost money. But they open business markets to you that are
otherwise closed - being able to sell in multiple cities without the customer
having to backhaul on their own, VPNs across geographical areas, etc. If you
don't like the price:performance balance of that equation, then you shouldn't
build one.
Well, this goes into "cutting off peers means your customers can't
access mine." There's two problems with this: First, the key point is
YOU can't access THEIRS without buying transit. Most ISPs aren't gonna
permit this loss of connectivity and will buy transit.. it just won't
be from the company that pulls the plug. Lets also note who its gonna
hurt more.. the company with fewer customer sites that need to get
accessed. The complaint ratio between the two groups are gonna be
wholly lopsided. The smaller ISP will receive far more complaints than
the larger one.
In my view, whats being proposed has more or less been in the works
for quite a while. Because of the customer's demands for 100%
connectivity, there's not a whole lot to stand in the way. And as long
as MFS/UUNET/WorldCom run the two biggest exchange points (and are
thus getting paid exorbatant amounce for connectivity INTO that NAP --
thus making it so you really pay *3* times for a packet to cross the
network -- along with various customer circuits into that NAP because
of the "near exit" -- making it actually 4 times if you consider loop
charges), there's no reason it can't continue. If it happens, it
happens. And chances are that these peering fees will be quite
high. For the big guys to buy from each other, the fees will more or
less balance out. For those that depend on the peering, they'll have
to bite the bullet and pay the fees. For those who can't afford the
fees, they'll have to look for cheap transit (and possibly degraded
service as a result). I doubt there will be any who can't afford
transit.
> The argument about national backbones costing money is a red herring. OF
> COURSE they cost money. But they open business markets to you that are
> otherwise closed - being able to sell in multiple cities without the customer
> having to backhaul on their own, VPNs across geographical areas, etc. If you
> don't like the price:performance balance of that equation, then you shouldn't
> build one.
Well, this goes into "cutting off peers means your customers can't
access mine." There's two problems with this: First, the key point is
YOU can't access THEIRS without buying transit. Most ISPs aren't gonna
permit this loss of connectivity and will buy transit.. it just won't
be from the company that pulls the plug. Lets also note who its gonna
hurt more.. the company with fewer customer sites that need to get
accessed. The complaint ratio between the two groups are gonna be
wholly lopsided. The smaller ISP will receive far more complaints than
the larger one.
That sounds like extortion and a violation of the Sherman Act. Someone
ought to look into this. I note that violations of the Sherman Act are
criminal as well as civil matters, and if done in collusion (and lock-step
changes in policy by "competitors" are one of the tests for this) you can
even raise a RICO charge.
In my view, whats being proposed has more or less been in the works
for quite a while. Because of the customer's demands for 100%
connectivity, there's not a whole lot to stand in the way. And as long
as MFS/UUNET/WorldCom run the two biggest exchange points (and are
thus getting paid exorbatant amounce for connectivity INTO that NAP --
thus making it so you really pay *3* times for a packet to cross the
network -- along with various customer circuits into that NAP because
of the "near exit" -- making it actually 4 times if you consider loop
charges), there's no reason it can't continue.
There's a fix for this. Set up another peering point.
Well, this goes into "cutting off peers means your customers can't
access mine." There's two problems with this: First, the key point is
YOU can't access THEIRS without buying transit. Most ISPs aren't gonna
permit this loss of connectivity and will buy transit.. it just won't
The problem is that if you buy transit you may be in violation of other
peering agreements that say your routes can not be viewed from any other
AS. Even if you were able to keep people like BBN and MCI to peer after
you had transit setup, who are you going to get it from? If you pick
Sprint, MCI, ANS, BBN, etc you will then not be able to peer with them.
This is sad, because I and other have spent millions on our networks to
build a DS3/OC3 network and connect to all the NAPs. Now that we have done
that we have people like uunet who have been peering with us for years
saying bye bye.
be from the company that pulls the plug. Lets also note who its gonna
hurt more... the company with fewer customer sites that need to get
accessed. The complaint ratio between the two groups are gonna be
wholly lopsided. The smaller ISP will receive far more complaints than
the larger one.
Depends on the traffic flow, I.E. I have MUCH more traffic going from my
network to uunet then my customer getting info from uunet. We don't do a
lot of dialup or types of access that suck from other providers. The other
providers like uunet are all getting more traffic then they are sending.
Nathan Stratton President, NetRail,Inc.