CDNs should pay eyeball networks, too.

Wed May 2 08:58:31 UTC 2012

I (in the UK) had the same letter from LLNW yesterday, word for word. 

When the peering was established, I had transit providers with strict peering policy (TATA/L3), now I have two with more open policy (HE/KPN). I assume LLNW now sees me via what is for them a peer, and see no financial reason to keep a direct session up.

However I must say that the wording of their letter is appalling. Even if they gave me 30 days notice to change my transit arrangement and did not terminate the session without warning, the tone of this mail is simply wrong. I am pretty sure my transit providers are seeing them via the same exchanges I do, so the traffic did, most likely, not even shift from interface. We did not have any issues of capacity and/or outage, so it is not that this change will save them much in opex costs neither. My peering ports are the same size as my transit ports, so they have gained anything in performance by shifting the traffic (and as I do not congest, did not loose anything neither though)

What it tells me is that they do not care about my business and prefer to force me to pay to reach their network (more than I was previously) via transit ... or pay more but less than transit using their "generous" pay peering offer .. I did not bother asking them what the cost was, my answer is NO. I will prefer to pay my transit provider, at least the extra capacity can be put to other use.

If ever I change back my transit provider to one they do not have favourable agreement with, I will think twice about peering again with them, or I may ask them for some pay peering to reflect their saving (no, I would not I am not that kind of scumbag).

As my traffic volume is clearly noise for them, I am sure they do not care at all. However, large rivers are all made of small streams, and all trees starts as seeds ( I am feeling zen this morning ... :D )

Thomas

I am glad they are spending ton of money to upgrade their infrastructure.. but so am I.

On 2 May 2012, at 06:06, Aleksi Suhonen wrote:

> Morning,
> 
> I have no idea what's really going on at LLNW, but I thought I'd still share an alternative view on this matter:
> 
> My understanding is that LLNW is spending tons of money to upgrade some of their IXP connections to 100GbE in Europe. With that in mind, I'm not that surprised if they wish to get some new income to cover those costs. While content is king, eye balls are kings too. Go figure.
> 
> -- 
>        Aleksi Suhonen / Axu TM Oy
>        Internetworking Consulting
>        Cellular: +358 45 670 2048
>        World Wide Web: www.axu.tm
> 