Partial Transit (was Re: OpenTransit (france telecom) depeers cogent)

Thu Apr 14 23:00:20 UTC 2005

> And if they don't get their collective acts together, I am certain they 
> will both lose a lot of customers.

[Hijacking the thread here a bit]

I think this is a good point you brought out. Neither provider is 
providing _full_ transit to their customers. If this becomes acceptable 
to a set of customers [say the multihomed ones] then providers will have 
to set a new price point probably significantly lower than the price 
point today for "partial transit". In this case, partial transit is 
defined by the provider as the set of ASes they may or may not have 
connectivity to at a certain point in the contract -- rather than the 
other case of partial transit where the customer decides what ASes are 
interesting.

I think both providers in these depeering conflicts would be unhappy 
with where the customers would price this new partial-transit level of 
service at. Essentially, the responsibility of maintaining 
full-connectivity is pushed further onto those who have 2 connections.. 
now they need 3 or more to ensure they have 2 reliable/consistent paths 
to each destination of interest. I for one think that the providers that 
  force their customers into this role should not be compensated at the 
same level as the providers that do a much better job of universal 
connectivity.

In other words, "break routes at your own risk." Smart customers will be 
watching [sooner or later ;)]..

disclaimer: I am not a customer of cogent, teleglobe, opentransit, and 
most companies that practice rabid peering discussions -- even for layer 
1/2 transport if I can help it.

Deepak Jain