Verizon Public Policy on Netflix

Sun Jul 13 02:27:11 UTC 2014

Randy Bush wrote:
>>> Right now, peering agreements are the wild west.
>> no.  those days passed in the last century.  you just don't know them.
>> but then, you are not an operator so no surprise.
> to be clearer.
>
> by count, the vast majority of peering is done by small ops informally.
> this represents a small fraction of the traffic.  you don't see the
> peering agreements because there are no formal ones.  and i guess it
> looks chaotic from the outside.  it looks pretty normal from the inside.
>
> e.g., i have a research rack connected to the six, tell most folk there
> that i have neither eyeballs nor eye candy, but peer informally with
> folk such as r&e networks where i need to move data.  oh, and the rack
> peers informally with my $dayjob, which might be the only informal
> peering which $dayjob does.  makes sense from the inside, looks strange
> from the outside.  you have to know my business model for it to make
> sense.
>
> the big kids peer very formally, which represents the majority of the
> traffic, and often does not happen at exchanges.  like many bi-lateral
> business to business deals in the commercial world, the details are
> confidential.  to you, it may look like the wild west.  to the players,
> it's just business.

Exactly - all of this is informal, unregulated, done on a deal-by-deal 
basis - and the big guys fight things out with big guns.

How is this not the wild west?

Miles Fidelman

-- 
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.   .... Yogi Berra