net neutrality and peering wars continue

Fri Jun 21 14:20:21 UTC 2013

On 2013-06-21 4:54 AM, Bill Woodcock wrote:
> Again, this only matters if you place a great deal of importance both on the notion that size equals fairness, and that fairness is more important than efficiency.
> ...
>> I think the point is here that networks are nudging these decisions by making certain services suck more than others by way of preferential network access.
> I agree completely that that's the problem.  But it didn't appear to be what Benson was talking about.
>

It's clear to me that you don't understand what I've said. But whether 
you're being obtuse or simply disagreeing, there is little value in 
repeating my specific points. Instead, in hope of encouraging useful 
discussion, I'll try to step back and describe things more broadly.

The behaviors of networks are driven (in almost all cases) by the needs 
of business. In other words, decisions about peering, performance, etc, 
are all driven by a P&L sheet.

So, clearly, these networks will try to minimize their costs (whether 
"fair" or not). And any imbalance between peers' cost burdens is an easy 
target. If one peer's routing behavior forces the other to carry more 
traffic a farther distance, then there is likely to be a dispute at some 
point - contrary to some hand-wave comments, carrying multiple gigs of 
traffic across the continent does have a meaningful cost, and pushing 
that cost onto somebody else is good for business.

This is where so-called "bit mile peering" agreements can help - 
neutralize arguments about balance in order to focus on what matters. Of 
course there is still the "P" side of a P&L sheet to consider, and 
networks will surely attempt to capture some of the success of their 
peers' business models. But take away the legitimate "fairness" excuses 
and we can see the real issue in these cases.

Not that we have built the best (standard, interoperable, cheap) tools 
to make bit-mile peering possible... But that's a good conversation to have.

Cheers,
-Benson