True Peers, Near Peers, Pseudo Peers, and Bandwidth Resellers

Mon Jul 21 15:58:28 UTC 1997

At 07:26 PM 7/20/97 -0700, Kent W. England wrote:
>1) The True Peer Backbones are those ISPs that carry the bulk of the
>Internet access traffic, run default free, and expect everyone else to buy
>transit from themselves or another True Peer.

Agreed.  To sum it up:

It seems that the general use of 'tiers' is based on who carries a
network's IP traffic.
.A first tier provider does not purchase transit from anyone
.A second tier provider buys from a first tier
.A third tier provider buys from a second tier provider and so on...

generally there are a few first tiers who peer at many locations and many
second tiers who are at one or two IXs and have a transit agreement, and
zillions of people who buy T1s and T3s and resell.