Sprints definition on NAPs (question)

Tue Apr 30 02:06:23 UTC 1996

On Mon, 29 Apr 1996, Nathan Stratton wrote:

|} > the Sherman Act (if memory serves).  These types of problems can be quite
|} > nasty, involving treble punitive damages.
|} 
|} Ya, but Sprint has more money then us, and money wins. :-)

More importantly, Sprint (or any "larger" carrier) has content, and
customers that YOU (being a "smaller" ISP) want to provide to your
customers.  Typically the larger folks are happy to get to ISP #1 via
their single transit route because there's less load on their routers
(being border or otherwise), fewer paths, etc.

However, for ISP #1 it's a different story -- if they were to peer with
the carrier life would potentially be better for them, whereas it affects
the carrier minimally in most cases.  Lots of ISPs currently do not peer
with the carriers at exchange points, and simply buy transit from one;
making them dependant on that carrier <-> customer relationship.

In a perfect world, everyone would peer directly with everyone else,
however this is not the case.  Carriers by nature invest substantially in
backbone infrastructure that smaller ISPs do not, to most this gives them
good reason not to provide "equal access" to ISPs that have not invested
similarly in infrastructure. 

-jh-