Cable & Wireless "de-peering"?!?

Mon May 7 22:25:46 UTC 2001

On Mon, 7 May 2001, Joseph T. Klein wrote:
> I contend that if quantifiable evidence exists that setting the peering
> bar high in the name of selling transit and/or restricting new players
> leads to a downward spiral in network quality ... then evidence exists
> that can be taken to stockholders and BOD of those companies.

Refusing to peer is not always a bad option if you have a big enough share
of the market. In Australia the top 3 providers (Telstra, Optus,
connect.com) own about 80% of the market, host most of the domestic
content and supply circuits to most other ISPs. It is "pretty hard" to
setup peering with any of them.

They have very little incentive to peer with smaller ISPs. The small
provider will have to connect with one of them anyway and they will
obviously make more money changing this provider for the circuit (and the
traffic) than just peering for free.

On the other hand in New Zealand we have all except on of the large
providers well connected by a couple of peering exchanges. This provider
is under a lot of pressure to peer with everyone else and at least one
other provider has recently shutdown a circuit that was being used for
peering (The large provider is trying to force others to pay for circuits
directly to it, plus some other fees).

-- 
Simon Lyall.                |  Newsmaster  | Work: simon.lyall at ihug.co.nz
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