Chinese bgp metering story

Fri Dec 18 18:57:22 UTC 2009

On Dec 18, 2009, at 1:47 PM, Fred Baker wrote:

> 
> On Dec 18, 2009, at 10:32 AM, Steven Bellovin wrote:
> 
>> Could you post a summary, in appropriate technical terms, of precisely what is being requested, and what changes to BGP they want?
> 
> Really.
> 
> I can read tea leaves with the best of them, and the tea leaves I see tell me the reporter (in the story the blog points to) doesn't have a clue. What is the substance of the proposal?
> 
> Depending on objectives, I would expect that this means that China wants to look at routers (which run BGP), and
> 
> (a) use IPFIX-or-something to measure traffic rates and charge for trans-China transit,
> (b) use interface statistics to measure traffic rates and charge for trans-China transit,
> (c) tax Chinese ISPs for transit services they provide, or maybe
> (d) use IPFIX-or-something to map communication patterns.
> 
> It would be (d) that the reporter might seriously want to worry about.
> 
> But what is all this about "is the ITU interested in changing BGP"? If the word "metering" makes any sense in context, BGP doesn't meter anything.
> 
> 
Or using BGP to carry charging information, so that ISPs could use that in their policies?  Or charging end-to-end, rather than for transit?

		--Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb