Generation of traffic in "settled" peering arrangement

Mon Aug 24 18:00:23 UTC 1998

> p.s.  The fact that the sender of traffic should be paying some portion
>       of the resulting costs is not a surprise to anyone; many of the
>       content companies that I've spoken to believe they already are
>       paying more as traffic increases, and were quite surprised to 
>       find that it doesn't actually make it to the networks which 
>       bear the brunt of the traffic carriage.
> 
> p.p.s.  As noted, departure from shortest-exit is also another approach
>         which may provide some answers to this situation, but that's a
>         different topic which deserves its own thread.  This message 
>         is simply noting that settling for peering traffic is quite 
>         viable, despite assertions to the contrary regarding traffic
>         generation.   As long as you're billing the senders on your
>         network for increased usage (and handing it off shortest-exit),
>         increased traffic is good thing.   
> 
Except, John, that you ignore the fact that you have basically required
anyone who wants to put a high-bandwidth server on your network to accept
other people writing a blank check for them, regardless of the legitimacy
of the hits they receive.

I doubt the customer would be too happy if your peering policy suddenly
tripled their bill.

Owen