Provider credibility - does it matter? was Re: Inter-provider relations

Fri Oct 25 18:23:06 UTC 1996

At 8:36 PM -0700 10/24/96, Vadim Antonov wrote:
>Note that i didn't even talk about less measurabe, but way too
>more important things like hosting of information suppliers.
>Say, Big Provider connects 1000 web sites; Small Provider hosts
>1 site -- benefit from peering in terms of Web site diversity to
>the Big Provider's customers is 0.1%.  To Small Provider's
>customers the benefit of peering is 99.9%.

Oops, this has an arithmetic fallacy.  Assuming that Big Provider also has
1000x more customers than Small Provider, and that all 1001 web sites are
equally attractive, then there are 1000 BP  customers each with a .001
chance of wanting to surf the SP web site.  Compare this with 1 SP customer
with a .999 chance of wanting to surf a BP web site, and a .001 chance of
surfing the SP web site.

In both directions the average traffic is the same (1 surf per unit time);
SP is getting the same information supply benefit as BP.

Of course this will show up as equal traffic in both directions, so it
would be a wash under settlements.  To the extent that one side's sites are
better for surfing (e.g. higher wavers :-) or has proportionally fewer
customers, traffic will be unequal.

Roger