BBN/GTEI

Fri Aug 21 22:00:28 UTC 1998

[In the message entitled "Re: BBN/GTEI" on Aug 21, 13:48, Michael Dillon writes:]
> 
> If such scalable peering already existed, I'm convinced that the current
> situation between Exodus and BBN would not have developped. So while those
> two companies figure out how to handle their relationship, maybe we could
> all learn from this and figure out a way to make peering work in a more
> scalable manner.
> 

I'm all for this.  What metric(s) shall we use?

Traffic is an obvious one.  Is that measured in packets per second, or bits
per second?  Since, in the USA (where the vast majority of traffic
originates) circuits are provisioned as full duplex, _does it matter_ which
direction the bits are flowing in?  You _should_ have provisioned adequately
for the flow, in any event.  That is, if you care about how much bandwidth
your customers can use.

Assuming it does matter, in which direction does the value flow?  Towards
the recipient, because the infrastructure for provisioning hundreds of DS3s
costs more, and the provider is not billing correctly for it?  Or is it
towards the content provider, because the infrastructure for provisioning
hundreds of web servers costs more, and the provider is not billing correctly
for it?

Another one is route-miles.  A provider with 1,000 route-miles of circuits
'obviously' has less value than a provider with 10,000 route-miles of
circuits.  How does speed of those circuits factor in?  Perhaps the metric
should be DS0-route-miles (64K-circuits per mile).  Of course, one WDM dark
fiber run of 250 miles would nuke this metric.  

How about dollar value of the network, in total bills paid to the telcos?
Does this mean that networks that are owned by telcos have an almost-zero
cost, or an "full retail price" accounting cost?  Are networks that
have reciprical agreements with telcos unduely penalized, or do they
benefit?

Another good metric might be number of customers.  As a fine point, does an
ISP transit customer of a network count as one customer, or does it count as
30,000 customers (the number of dialup customers serviced by that ISP).
Does a web content provider count as one customer, or as 5,000 customers
(the number of his hosting customers).  What about special cases that offer
free email accounts and/or web pages, that have thousands or millions of
customers?

How about number of network advertisments, or routes?  Would this lead
to silly announcements (de-aggregation) to 'equalize' the number of
routing announcements?

We haven't even got to the hard points, which is *how much* each of
these metrics are 'worth'.  

We also haven't begun to address sites like gatekeeper.dec.com,
ftp.cdrom.com, and the like.  Nor networks with plently of suck bandwidth
(but not much content) such as MSN and AOL.

It's harder than it looks on the surface, folks.  Clues appreciated.

-- 
Dave Rand
dlr at bungi.com
http://www.bungi.com