Sprint v. Cogent, some clarity & facts

Tue Nov 4 19:39:15 UTC 2008

On Tuesday 04 November 2008 11:55:01 Patrick W. Gilmore wrote:
> On Nov 4, 2008, at 11:51 AM, Tomas L. Byrnes wrote:
> > The concept of "Transit Free" is a political failure, not a technical
> > one.

> We disagree.
[snip]
> So I guess you could say the current situation is a political success.

I would say a 'qualified' political success.  Like most other political 
solutions to technical problems, the concept of transit-free (and even the 
differentiation between transit and settlement-free peering) is a best-effort 
compromise, and works pretty well under most circumstances.

But, which is worse: a completely 100% reachable Internet* with massive 
transit congestion that is massively expensive or the current partitionable 
Internet* that actually works and is affordable?

Note: * There is no such thing as a 100% reachable 'Internet,' just a tangled 
lattice of interconnections of autonomous systems who provide best-effort 
interconnections.  To what extent there IS an 'Internet' changes every 
second.