Paying for delivery of packets (was about Sprint Peering, and Importance of Content)

JC Dill nanog at vo.cnchost.com
Fri Jul 12 06:41:34 UTC 2002


On 08:33 PM 7/11/02, Barney Wolff wrote:
 >
 >On Thu, Jul 11, 2002 at 08:00:45PM -0700, JC Dill wrote:
 >>
 >> The problem with asymmetric pricing is that the cost of passing the 
packets
 >> is equally born by both ends.  Take 2 networks that peer, one with mostly
 >> content, one with mostly eyeballs.  The content providers pay a higher
 >> price *per MB* for bandwidth to their provider than the end user does, but
 >> both networks have equal costs in transiting the packets from the 
server to
 >> the end user.
 >
 >This might be true per Mbps of capacity, but is simply not true per average
 >user's MB/month.  The typical cable/dsl subscriber still only uses about
 >5-10 Kbps, averaged over a month.

Of course it's not true if you compare "one user" to "one content 
provider".  That comparison is useless.

What you need to compare is $100,000/month (or more) worth of customers, 
either all content providers, or all end users.  Which group requires more 
total bandwidth, and more resilient (redundant) connections?  Which group 
is more resistant to price increases, more likely to just turn off their 
services (or switch to a lower cost provider) rather than pay more if 
prices go up (or service goes down)?  Which group is more concerned with 
Five Nines?

Clearly, one group has a greater interest in ensuring that their packets 
are sent as fast as possible, as reliably as possible.  Yet, both groups 
are equally important for the network (as a whole) to work.  My prediction 
is that over time, this one group will be willing to foot more and more of 
the total cost of the network (from end to end).

 >If lots of people start watching video
 >streams for much of the day, current cable/dsl rates will not survive.

Current cable/dsl rates will survive (or even decrease), *if* there are 
settlements that subsidize the increased bandwidth use/cost from the 
content providers to the "eyeball" networks that feed the end users.

jc




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