"potential new and different architectural approach" to solve the Comcast - L3 dispute

Richard A Steenbergen ras at e-gerbil.net
Fri Dec 17 17:48:25 UTC 2010


On Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 11:15:14AM -0600, Benson Schliesser wrote:
> 
> I have no direct knowledge of the situation, but my guess: I suspect 
> the proposal was along the lines of longest-path / best-exit routing 
> by Level(3).  In other words, if L(3) carries the traffic (most of the 
> way) to the customer, then Comcast has no complaint--the costs can be 
> more fairly distributed.  The "modest investment" is probably in tools 
> to evaluate traffic and routing metrics, to make this work.  This 
> isn't really *new* to the peering community, but it isn't normal 
> either.

Nah, you're still thinking about this like it was a classic peering 
dispute over ratios, when nothing could be further from the truth. First 
off, by the very nature of a CDN, all of the Netflix/etc traffic is 
going to be delivered to the best exit on the long-haul network already. 
Second, Comcast is a FULL TRANSIT CUSTOMER of Level 3. Typically the 
customer gets to dictate the handoff point to the provider, by either 
advertising MEDs, or by sending inconsistent routes. The fact that the 
existing Level3/Comcast routing DOESN'T make Level 3 haul all of the 
bits to the best exit mean it's highly likely that Comcast agreeing to 
haul the bits was part of their commercial transit agreement, probably 
in exchange for lower transit prices.

-- 
Richard A Steenbergen <ras at e-gerbil.net>       http://www.e-gerbil.net/ras
GPG Key ID: 0xF8B12CBC (7535 7F59 8204 ED1F CC1C 53AF 4C41 5ECA F8B1 2CBC)




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