UUNET Pulling Peering Agreements & replacing them with charging under non-disclosure?

Fri May 2 12:56:32 UTC 1997

On Fri, 2 May 1997, Stephen Balbach wrote:

> 
> > First it was AGIS (but who cares about AGIS?). Now UUNET. Tomorrow who?
> > MCI? As UUNET and others of the big five move to consolidate their
> > markets.......... let UUNET put the smaller national backbones against the
> > wall and whom do the rest of ISP's have to rely on?   Those ISPs who did
> > not get hit in UUNET's first round of cuts. Will you get it in the neck in
> > the second or the third round?
> 
> The only thing UUNET is cutting is Internet trees, and there are some who 
> are protesting by hugging them. Clear out the chaff for next seasons 
> crops. 
> 
> Buying connectivity from an ISP who peers with UUNET, or buying direct
> from UUNET, is a lot cheaper then building a national DS-3/OC-3 backbone
> and trying to be default free - this is not about UUNET cuting throats,
> it's about large and small ISP's examining thier business model. 
> 
Sure, if UUNET was only cutting peering with small ISPs who were only at
one NAP, and had peering because of a backdoor deal years ago.  It appears
that UUNET is cutting peering with those medium-sized ISPs who *have*
built a national DS-3/OC-3 backbone.  I really don't see how squeezing the
medium-sized ISPs who have already invested the millions of dollars it
takes to build a national backbone helps anyone but UUNET.  
I see this as a direct attack on the smaller regional and national ISPs
who have been taking customers away from UUNET because of better
performance and better service.  
The issue here isn't getting other ISPs to examine their business model.
If an ISP has already installed a national network, they have either done
their research, figured their costs and potential gains, and invested the
money wisely, or they are made of money, and since few ISPs I know of are
made of money, I'll bet they did the background work.  One of the reasons
to install a national network is that some large ISPs state flat-out that
they won't consider peering unless you are are connected to a certain
number of naps with at at least T3/OC3 speeds, which is a reasonable
requirement, but to tell someone that, and then either raise the standards
to an illogical level (guess which national ISP said someone would have to
have at least 100 coast-to-coast T3s to even be considered for peering
recently) or just plain terminate peering with all but the largest ISPs
seems underhanded at best.
It's UUNET's network, and they can do what they want with it, but
UUNET/Worldcom/MFS won't be getting much more business from us if these
actions continue.

      ________
      \______/			Jeremiah Kristal  
       \____/			Network Operations 
        \__/			IDT Internet Services
         \/			jeremiah at hq.idt.net
         			201-928-4454