Ungodly packet loss rates

Thu Oct 24 03:30:49 UTC 1996

At 12:33 PM 23-10-96 -0400, Robert Laughlin wrote:
>As one who is living this senerio on a daily basis, I can tell you it's 
>frustrating and upsetting. 

Actually, peering requirements today are the first effective barrier
to entry into the ISP business that have been successfully realized
and I don't mean that in a restraint of trade sense. CIX settlements
didn't do the trick and NAP fees didn't either. :-) But the cost of
peering today makes transit look reasonable in many more cases. I
sympathize with your frustration and with the frustration of the large
ISPs in dealing with the huge caseloads of peering requests.
>
>The model that makes sense to me, is for the largest networks to exchange
>traffic through private interconnects, and for them to treat the
>aggregated NAP traffic as another large ISP.  The NAP is then used for the
>2nd tier and smaller providers to exchange traffic with each other, as
>well as a collection point to gather up traffic for the large networks.

Well, yes, but what if the large players satisfied their need to interconnect
with their largest peers at private interconnects? What would be their
motivation
to maintain good connectivity and good routing to the open interconnects? I
think their enthusiasm for maintaining good connectivity to the open
interconnects
might wane, much as their enthusiasm for CIX with its mandated peering has
waned.
The disappearance (more accurately, the crippling) of the open
interconnects will 
mean the barrier to entry will become truly awesome, something like a dozen
private DS-3 interconnects to get full routing.

--Kent
speaking as the PacBell NAP technical consultant

~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~
Kent W. England                                     Six Sigma Networks
1655 Landquist Drive, Suite 100              Voice/Fax:   619.632.8400
Encinitas, CA  92024                                kwe at 6SigmaNets.com
Experienced Internet Consulting     ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~