And then there were two

Wed Jun 6 15:45:41 UTC 2001

>From: Sean Donelan <sean at donelan.com>
>To: nanog at merit.edu
>Subject: And then there were two
>Date: 5 Jun 2001 17:16:13 -0700
>
>
>If you accept the premise that "peer == equal" does that mean
>in the end there will be only two ISPs each with exactly 50%
>of the world's Internet because no one else will be an equal?

Why can't you have more than two 'equals'?  Couldn't you have three 'equals' 
or four 'equals'?  It would be just as difficult to maintain three or four 
_exact_ divisions as it would be to maintain two.

>I've never understood how the word "peer" mutated from its
>technical definition arising from its use in the BGP protocol
>to its use by marketing people.

The keyword is 'marketing' people.  Aren't they the ones who always twist 
and exploit technical terms?

>As far as I can tell, EGP (Exterior Gateway Protocol) originally
>used the term "neighbor."  Berkeley used the berkelism "peer" in
>their software and RFC 911 documenting their experience, and the
>term stuck through EGP2, BGP1-4.
>
>If we still used the word "neighbor" would the phrase "Are you
>a neighbor?" have a different ring than "Are you a peer?"  You
>can have lots of neighbors, even if you think you are superior
>to all of them.

You're thinking about this too much.  The backhoes must be behaving today!  
;-)

-rb

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