Sprint v. Cogent, some clarity & facts

David Schwartz davids at webmaster.com
Mon Nov 3 15:03:04 UTC 2008


Patrick W. Gilmore wrote:

> 4. There is a reason behind ratios which has nothing to do with telco
> "sender-pays"

There is an alleged reason.

> Hot potato routing + very poor ratios puts much more of the cost on
> the receiving network.  This is a valid, logical, and costly concern
> for receiving networks.

So what? So the argument is:

1) Your customers want to receive from my customers.

2) Receiving is more expensive.

3) Therefore you should pay me?

I want to send, and sending is cheap. Your customers want to do the
expensive receiving, not mine. My customers want to do the cheap sending.

The ratio argument is nonsense. If your customers want to receive mostly,
and receiving is expensive, they should pay you more to cover your higher
costs in receiving traffic. If my customers mostly want to send, and sending
is cheap, then I should pay less, since I want to do the cheap thing and you
want to do the expensive thing.

If we hold a convention in Idaho, the people who live near Idaho don't pay
money to the people who came from out-of-town. And if you live in Alaska,
get used to the fact that you're going to be paying more than your share of
transportation expenses to go to conventions. If you don't like it, don't
live in Alaska.

> That this issue has nothing to do with telco "sender-
> pays" mentality is.  (Of course, the telcos might still have that
> mentality, but that doesn't change the facts.)

You are probably right that it's not an old-fahsioned "sender-pays"
mentality. But it is complete nonsense. Your customers pay you to receive
their traffic, even if that's more expensive than other things they might
want to do.

Your customers pay you to carry their traffic across your network between
them and the next network in the line. There is no reason anyone else should
compensate you for doing this.

DS






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