Inter-provider relations

Fri Oct 25 13:35:44 UTC 1996

On Thu, 24 Oct 1996, Robert Bowman wrote:
> Not that I agree at all with AGIS's new stance on peering and market domination
> but we have to understand that the "friendly" Internet has long since past.
> Every major provider now has very strict provisions for peering.  These
> are obviously in their best interests for whatever reasons.

In practice, I have found this to not be true, unless you define "major 
provider" as one who *has* strict peering provisions....:)  Generally I 
have found most providers very willing to peer at Mae-East and Mae-West, 
after all, that's why they spend the money to connect there. The problem 
is getting their attention.  The folks who make the peering decisions and 
implement them are usually the busiest folks in the organization (not 
because of peering decisions, they usually have lots of other (better?) 
things to do.)

What would help, would be a way to reduce the effort involved in setting up
these peerings.  At the DC Nanog, I proposed a Multilateral Universal
Peering arrangement, consisting of an agreement and a few changes to the
RAs, specifically in the area of macros or include statments.  It would
work this way: any provider who wished to (and met the criteria?), could
sign the agreement and with a few changes to the RA macro, be peered
thru the RAs to all the other signatories.  The model today requires
N*(N-1) discussions, with N approaching 100 at Mae-East, this is a waste
of resources.  Unfortunately the needed software changes to the RAs is not
yet ready, but once it is, I plan to try and get this effort started.

Best Regards,
Robert Laughlin

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