What Net Neutrality should and should not cover

Sun Apr 27 18:40:34 UTC 2014

* William Herrin

> On Sun, Apr 27, 2014 at 2:05 AM, Rick Astley <jnanog at gmail.com> wrote:
>> #3 On paid peering:
>> I think this is where people start to disagree but I don't see what should
>> be criminal about paid peering agreements. More specifically, I see serious
>> problems once you outlaw paid peering and then look at the potential
>> repercussions that would have.
> 
> Double-billing Rick. It's just that simple. Paid peering means you're
> deliberately billing two customers for the same byte -- the peer and
> the downstream. And not merely incidental to ordinary service - the
> peer specifically connects to gain access to customers who already pay
> you and no one else. Where those two customers have divergent
> interests, you have to pick which one you'll serve even as you
> continue to bill both. That's a corrupt practice.

It's not "just that simple".

If for example you asks for a peering with me, the first thing I'll do
is to take a close look at how the traffic between our two networks is
currently being routed.

If I see that I have no monetary or technical gain from setting up that
peering with you, perhaps because the traffic is currently flowing via
an already existing peering of mine (with your upstream, say), or via a
transit port of mine that's not exceeding its CDR, then I'd probably
want you to at cover my costs of setting up that peering before
accepting, at the very least.

Even if I was exceeding the CDR on my transit ports, it's not at all
certain that accepting a peering with you would even be a break-even
proposition for me. Keep in mind that unlike routers and line cards, IP
transit service *is* dirt cheap these days.

So no, refusing a peering or requiring the would-be peer to pay for the
privilege isn't *necessarily* "corrupt practice". It Depends.

Tore