Peering versus Transit

Mon Sep 30 21:39:59 UTC 1996

Bill Woodcock <woody at zocalo.net> wrote:

>    WRT the former, I simply cannot fathom, and no one other than Sean has
>    yet presented an argument explaining why it's malicious to deliver a
>    packet to its addressee's ISP.

You should always add "without consent of the said ISP".

It is no different from dumping a pile of bricks at somebody's property.

Are bricks useful?  You bet.  Will it get you dragged in court on
charges trespassing and defacing the property?  Sure as hell.

It is not a "theft", it is more like trespassing.  It is illegal and
covered by codes related to unauthorized use of equipment.

>    Why should I, as an ISP, not prefer
>    that all other ISPs deliver packets to my customers as quickly,
>    efficiently, directly, and inexpensively as possible?

Efficiently, directly and inexpesively from whose point of view?
Refer to the example of ISP in Mukhosransk.

>   Why should I
>   prefer a more expensive or less reliable route, or expect any other
>   ISP to do so?

There is a million reasons to do that -- economical, legal, technical.
One technical reason is pretty obvious -- it is called "traffic engineering".
Large ISPs often use nudged routing advertisements as means to balance
load between peering points.  That assumes that nobody is sending
unsolicited traffic.

--vadim