cogent+ Level(3) are ok now

Tue Nov 1 14:40:09 UTC 2005

On Nov 1, 2005, at 7:53 AM, John Curran wrote:

> At 12:27 PM +0000 11/1/05, Stephen J. Wilcox wrote:
>> Hi John,
>>
>>> Even with cold-potato routing, there is an expense in handling  
>>> increased
>>> levels of traffic that is destined for your network.  This  
>>> increase in traffic
>>> often has no new revenue associated with it, because it is  
>>> fanning out to
>>> thousands of flat-rate consumer/small-business connections (e.g.  
>>> DSL)
>>> where billing is generally by peak capacity not usage.
>>
>> not true for cogent tho, we know that virtually all their traffic  
>> is usage based
>> transit customers
>
> The traffic from Cogent creates additional infrastructure  
> requirements on L3.
> L3 may (or may not) be able to recover these costs as incremental  
> revenue
> from the recipients, depending on the particulars of their  
> agreements.  One
> way of mitigating their exposure is to set an upper bound on  
> uncompensated
> inbound traffic.
>
> Mind you, this is entirely hypothetical, as specifics of the Cogent/ 
> L3 agreement
> are not available.   However, it is one way to let everyone "bill  
> and keep" for
> Internet traffic without an unlimited exposure, and it is an  
> approach that has
> been used successfully in the past.

Taking L3 & Cogent completely out of this discussion, I'm not sure I  
agree with your assessment.

I think everyone agrees that unbalanced ratios can create a situation  
where one side pays more than the other.  However, assuming something  
can be used to keep the costs equal (e.g. cold-potato?), I do not see  
how one network can tell another: "You can't send me what my  
customers are requesting of you."

If your business model is to provide flat-rate access, it is not _my_  
responsibility to ensure your customers do not use more access than  
your flat-rate can compensate you to deliver.

-- 
TTFN,
patrick