Sending vs requesting. Was: Re: Sprint / Cogent

Barrett Lyon blyon at blyon.com
Sun Nov 2 00:37:54 UTC 2008


True... however this depeering may have created more of a mess for  
Sprint's marketing and their customers than they predicted, which has  
a negative impact on business and would not be fun to explain at a  
board meeting.

I guess it's hard for sweater vests to understand that until it smacks  
them in the face.

-Barrett


On Nov 1, 2008, at 5:00 PM, Matthew Petach wrote:

> On 11/1/08, Barrett Lyon <blyon at blyon.com> wrote:
> ...
>> In this case, it's very clear that customers are impacted and the  
>> Internet
>> as a whole suffers, which is really unfortunate.  The end result of a
>> business decision has been to sacrifice the customer's needs,  
>> trust, and
>> ability to communicate.  It's a bad maxim to subscribe to!  I  
>> really hope
>> that other networks do apply more thinking into peering than just  
>> what's
>> best for business -- it sure shows off an ugly underbelly.
>>
>> -Barrett
>
> Unfortunately, as I'm sure you're all too aware, for public  
> companies, it's
> very hard to get away with saying "I was doing what was right for the
> Internet, not what would make my business the most money" at a
> shareholder meeting, or during an earning's call with Wall Street
> analysts; they tend to be very unforgiving of actions that aren't in
> line with the short-term profit-making goal, to the point where CEOs
> have been ousted and class-action lawsuits threatened when it
> seems the actions being taken weren't geared to optimize profits
> for the shareholders.
>
> Converging two threads together, I think the same pressure affects
> IPv6 deployment and will affect IPv6 peering; while it would be *best*
> for the Internet if everyone put the time and resources forward to get
> dual-stacked now, bring up widespread peering, and get IPv6 to a
> point where it's a viable transport mechanism, the real fact of the
> matter is that there's no profit motive in moving to IPv6 at the
> moment, so people just aren't going to do it, no matter how much
> it may be "best for the Internet".
>
> Fix the market drivers for public companies, and then we can
> fix the Internet; otherwise, we'll always be steering towards
> that which makes sense for the business, regardless of which
> customers of other networks it hurts, or which resource exhaustion
> cliff it hurtles us towards.
>
> Putting on a devil's advocate hat for a moment...if various  
> international
> regulatory bodies and government agencies mandated universal
> connectivity via both IPv4 and IPv6, depeering would cease to be
> an issue; regardless of what the business side said, companies
> would not be allowed to partition the Internet, and widespread  
> adoption
> of IPv6 would be forced, rather than being a "maybe someday" case.
> Downside is that prices would go up, and expansion into new regions
> would slow down, as the costs associated with developing new areas
> would bring a much higher price tag.  It would be better for the  
> Internet
> as a whole, but worse for most of the individual users of it, from a  
> cost
> perspective.  Would you still say things were better for the overall
> Internet at that point, if it meant everyone had to pay more in order
> to ensure that universal connectivity?
>
> I'm cheap, so I'm leaning towards the side of letting the market
> work these issues out; but I'm always willing to listen to other
> thoughts on the matter.  :)
>
> Matt





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