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

Sat Oct 26 22:08:27 UTC 1996

On Sat, 26 Oct 1996, Jeremy Porter wrote:

> >As I said, my main point was that the Economist's model was seriously
> >flawed.  
> > ...
> Of course, as long as there are more users of the Internet located
> in the US, and more content sites in the US, and the interesting
> applications located in the US, there will be a greater value
> to the non-us IPs to drop lines in, and as our Asian friends have
> pointed out it is often cheaper to drop lines to the West coast
> of the US than to drop inter-asia links.  

This is just another seriously flawed model.  

> If companies like Global Sprintlink, Cable and Wireless, etc,
> are going into non-US peering locations, then it is already
> changing.  

Yes it is already changing.  But as far as I can see, Global 
SprintLink represents the old US-centric model: GSL is the 
international arm of SprintLink and essentially sells bandwidth 
into the States.  C&W is setting itself up as a global backbone
provider.  

>            However compared to the amount of Internet bandwidth
> in the US, compared to elsewhere, I seriously doubt that there
> is any kind of siginifcant subisidy to US users.

I know it's hard to think about these things, but a T1 across the
Atlantic costs us 235 times as much as a T1 to MAE West.  Comparing
Mbps is a joke.

> (Just because it costs non-US based ISPs more to play the 
> fully connected game, doesn't mean there is a signficant cost
> difference, just a market imbalance.

Yes 235:1 is a bit of a market imbalance; some might say that it 
is a significant cost difference.

)

--
Jim Dixon              VBCnet GB Ltd +44 117 929 1316  fax +44 117 927 2015
http://www.uk.vbc.net  VBCnet West   +1  408 971 2682  fax +1  408 971 2684