Sprint peering policy

Mon Jul 1 16:55:55 UTC 2002

Because it works - the Internet, that is. If peering were broken, the
Internet would not function in any sort of reasonable manner. However, it is
functioning quite nicely today, even with a huge amount of finacial chaos.
Why mess with something that actually works properly? And if you are going
to interfere with the normal market processes, doing so through heavyhanded
government regulation, is normally the worst way to go about it.

A vague sense of unfairness or unhappyness is the worst of reasons to
regulate an industry.

- Daniel Golding

>
>
>
> >  Usually the pain for one party is greater than the pain for the
> >  other, unless they are really peers of each other, in which case
> >  settlement free interconnections happen. However, if there isn't
> >  equal amounts of pain being felt on both sides, then normally the
> >  party with the more hurt tries to redress the issue.
> >
> >  Usually this imbalance in perceived value is redressed by one of the
> >  parties offering to make up the difference by some form of a transfer
> >  of money.
>
> and yet, the party who experiences the pain will normally perceive the
> other party's *intentions* as the cause of that pain.  knowing that the
> pain can be transformed from "can't exchange traffic" pain into "must
> pay money" pain tends to reinforce this perception.
>
> when this situation has existed in other industries, gov't intervention
> has always resulted.  even when the scope is international.  i've not
> been able to puzzle out the reason why the world's gov'ts have not
> stepped in with some basic interconnection requirements for IP carriers.
>