Sprint v. Cogent, some clarity & facts

Mon Nov 3 20:21:50 UTC 2008

On Mon, Nov 03, 2008 at 04:34:16PM -0200, Nicolas Antoniello wrote:
> Sorry for my possible ignorance, but could you explain me what are you
> calling "transit-free"?

Transit-free means that you don't pay anyone else to reach some 3rd-party
network.  In other words, if I'm Sprint, I don't pay UUNET to get to X.
Either X connects directly with me or X pays someone else to get to me.
If I can make that claim for all values of X, then I am transit-free.

Note that while I don't pay another network for access to its *peers*
(that's transit) I might pay for access to its customers.  This is
typically called "paid peering" or "settlement-based peering", but
sometimes it can just be plain transit that's modified with communities
to look like peering.  To add to the confusion, the latter case might be
described differently by both parties; the seller probably says "X is a
transit customer of mine", and the buyer says "I have peering with Y",
and in this case, neither one is lying (mostly).

If you didn't see the reference a month or so ago when Paul sent it, the
following link might be interesting to you:

    http://arstechnica.com/guides/other/peering-and-transit.ars

--Jeff