Sprint peering policy

Sat Jun 29 02:32:03 UTC 2002

Mike Leber <mleber at he.net> writes:

> Sprint's peers aren't equal to Sprint or each other when considered by
> revenue, profitability, number of customers, or geographical coverage.

A good proxy for the above is to ask the question:

 Do X and Y feel they derive equal value (for some value of equal) by
 interconnecting with each other? 

 If they think they do, then an interconnection is set up between X
 and Y. However, if one party feels that they do NOT derive equal
 value by interconnecting with the other, than that party usually
 balks.

 X states that they would only feel equal value is derived by both
 parties if traffic between X and the other party is n mb/s with a
 ratio of p:q.  Y disagrees. They do not interconnect. This causes
 pain.  

 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.

> This is ridiculous elitism.

see above.

> to make sense of their peering policy, just accept the fact that each
> company has policies that they believe to be in their best interests and
> omit the pretense of justifying this by the movement of heavenly bodies in
> the spheres.

I think we are in agreement here.

/vijay