Level 3 Communications Issues Statement Concerning Comcast's Actions

Matthew Petach mpetach at netflight.com
Thu Dec 2 22:10:29 UTC 2010


On Thu, Dec 2, 2010 at 6:28 AM, William Allen Simpson
<william.allen.simpson at gmail.com> wrote:
> [Changed long CC list to BCC]
...
> The Ou article makes no sense at all!  It's based on the premise that Level
> 3
> and Comcast are peering, and that traffic should be symmetric.  Everywhere
> else,
> the articles and pundits indicate that Comcast is a transit customer of
> Level 3.

So, one wonders why Level3 didn't just say "look, I'm the vendor,
you're the customer; the customer pays the vendor for service,
period.  If you don't like the current contract, you can request
a renegotiation, or your can submit your notice to terminate,
based on the termination clauses listed in the contract (including
whatever penalties are included for early termination)."

I've never seen another case of a customer trying to bill their
upstream provider, without being summarily laughed at.

I hope this doesn't set a precedent, where customers of
transit providers can turn around and decide that "transit"
only means "outbound bit transit", and "inbound bits" are
fair game for reverse billing.  If it does, it's going to completely
eliminate "transit" as a commercial offering; instead, we'll
all be stuck doing settlements in every direction for
traffic...and that's just *way* too much paperwork.  ^_^;

Matt
(speaking only for the small  pile of lint that accumulated under
my head after falling asleep under my desk while trying to write
this message many hours ago, and certainly not for any employer,
ever)




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