Verio Decides what parts of the internet to drop

Sun Dec 5 19:54:00 UTC 1999

Sean Doran <smd at clock.org> wrote:

> It doesn't need to be equitable and fair to all; the fact is that
> I consider my routing table slots to be a scarce resource, and
> I will conserve that resource.  Filtering is one approach; a step
> towards your approach is relaxing filters for people willing to
> pay me money to do so.

This is the reality. The Internet is no longer an academic/
research network, and the sooner people accept that money talks
(and bullsh*t walks) in a commercial context, the sooner an
equitable mechanism for guaranteeing reachability to specific
networks will become established.

> People with hardcore reasons for using a too-long prefix will
> probably be willing to pay a fee to an agent able to broker
> cheapest-possible access to the routing slots in the networks
> that are smart enough to sell them.

I like this idea very much, because it makes a clear distinction
between transit and reachability services. For instance, I might
not want to use Sprint for transit, even though I want to have
reachability to its customers.

M.