CDNs should pay eyeball networks, too.

Tue May 1 17:07:31 UTC 2012

On May 1, 2012, at 9:39 AM, Dominik Bay wrote:

> Yesterday I received the following mail, from a CDN:
> 
**snip**
> Should your company decline this option, or if we do not have an agreement regarding the settlement in place prior to May 31st 2012, Limelight Networks will terminate the peering sessions on that day, with this letter serving as 30 day notice.
> 
> 
> Sincerely,

While I can understand having some peering requirements, the goal of any CDN should be to have the best reach possible.  Without knowing if this is PI peering or just across a IX it is hard to judge what their (or your) costs are.  If it is IX it would seem irrational to cut off someone who you are doing meaningful traffic with.

> ----8<----
> In this particular case I'm talking about >=600Mbps of traffic send out by Limelight to "my" eyeballs, not mentioning their fairly small footprint in Germany in comparison to other CDNs.
> 

600Mbps would appear to be meaningful traffic.  Without the other side of the story it's hard to get a full grip on the situation.  It is always possible that these are business (not network) decisions where there is a certain level of income expected from a division.

> These points aside, we are talking about a Content *Delivery* Network here. There are CDNs out there who burn to improve their customer experience (both the content creators and the content receiver) at high cost.
> Having a Tier1 attitude and telling eyeball networks with <1Gbps of traffic exchanged to bugger off or pay is not one of the ways to improve this.

I do agree here, again on an IX level.   They still have the choice to backhaul to you or hot potato your traffic wherever they feel like it.  From the data you have provide it appears to be a lose-lose situation to de-peer you.

> 
> At the end of the day I'm going to charge CDNs who want to deliver their customers content to my eyeballs and make me pay (about 2USD per Mbps, with a minimum of 1Gbps).
> 

That may be what they are doing "if at all possible try to monetize it".