[Re: the cost of carrying routes]

Thu Oct 17 17:17:33 UTC 2002

On Thu, 17 Oct 2002 09:47:12 PDT, Ratul Mahajan said:

> ps:  since i don't run networks myself, all of this may be something that is
> obviously asinine.  would be great if someone was to point out if that is
> the case, and why.

Remember - in most cases, the management of a company *may* have moral or
ethical requirements "to be a good citizen", but they almost certainly have
legal requirements to "the bottom line".  If a site is paying you for transit,
there's a very strong *dis*incentive to take any action that would prevent a
DDoS attack - the bottom line says the Right Thing is to install just enough
traffic shaping so a DDoS won't melt *your* net, and bill for the traffic. ;)

If anything, in that case you want to charge well-run sites MORE, to make up
for the revenue loss of them not being involved in a DDoS. ;)

The exact same logic applies to spammage, worms, and other malware - when
there's a bandwidth glut, and you're selling bandwidth, you *WANT* traffic.

I wonder how much revenue SirCam and Nimda generated....
-- 
				Valdis Kletnieks
				Computer Systems Senior Engineer
				Virginia Tech

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