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

Fri May 2 16:56:38 UTC 1997

> The argument about national backbones costing money is a red herring.  OF
> COURSE they cost money.  But they open business markets to you that are
> otherwise closed - being able to sell in multiple cities without the customer
> having to backhaul on their own, VPNs across geographical areas, etc.  If you
> don't like the price:performance balance of that equation, then you shouldn't
> build one.

Well, this goes into "cutting off peers means your customers can't
access mine." There's two problems with this: First, the key point is
YOU can't access THEIRS without buying transit. Most ISPs aren't gonna
permit this loss of connectivity and will buy transit.. it just won't
be from the company that pulls the plug. Lets also note who its gonna
hurt more.. the company with fewer customer sites that need to get
accessed. The complaint ratio between the two groups are gonna be
wholly lopsided. The smaller ISP will receive far more complaints than
the larger one.

In my view, whats being proposed has more or less been in the works
for quite a while. Because of the customer's demands for 100%
connectivity, there's not a whole lot to stand in the way. And as long
as MFS/UUNET/WorldCom run the two biggest exchange points (and are
thus getting paid exorbatant amounce for connectivity INTO that NAP --
thus making it so you really pay *3* times for a packet to cross the
network -- along with various customer circuits into that NAP because
of the "near exit" -- making it actually 4 times if you consider loop
charges), there's no reason it can't continue. If it happens, it
happens. And chances are that these peering fees will be quite
high. For the big guys to buy from each other, the fees will more or
less balance out. For those that depend on the peering, they'll have
to bite the bullet and pay the fees. For those who can't afford the
fees, they'll have to look for cheap transit (and possibly degraded
service as a result). I doubt there will be any who can't afford
transit.

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Wayne Bouchard                             GlobalCenter
web at primenet.com                           
Primenet Network Engineering               Internet Solutions for
(602) 416-6422   800-373-2499 x6422        Growing Businesses
FAX: (602) 416-9422
http://www.primenet.com                    http://www.globalcenter.net
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