Inevitable death, was Re: Verizon Public Policy on Netflix

Tue Jul 15 04:44:27 UTC 2014

In message <201407150421.WAA26665 at mail.lariat.net>, Brett Glass writes:
> Mike:
> 
> An ASN is, literally, just a number. One that's used by a very 
> awkward and primitive routing system that requires constant 
> babysitting and tweaking and, after lo these many years, still 
> doesn't deliver the security or robustness it should. Obtaining 
> this token number (and a bunch of IP addresses which is no 
> different, qualitatively, from what I already have) would be a 
> large expense that would not produce any additional value for my 
> customers but could force me to raise their fees -- something which 
> I absolutely do not want to do.
> 
> Perhaps it's best to think of it this way: I'm outsourcing some 
> backbone routing functions to my upstreams, which (generously) 
> aren't charging me anything extra to do it. In my opinion, that's a 
> good business move.
> 
> As for "peering:" the definition is pretty well established. ISPs 
> do it; content providers at the edge do not.

Bullshit.  Lots of entities peer.  Hell, I've peered over 9600 baud
leased line slip connections back in 80's. Late 80's but still the
80's.  The only requirement for peering is that you want to
interconnect.

I've also peered over fibre pulled between building on a campus.

In all cases both entities bought and dedicated ports on their
routers.  Routes were exchanged and bits shipped back and forth.

An ISP and a content provider can peer.  Their common job is to ship
bits to the ISP's customers.  They are peers on that role.

> Netflix is fighting a war of semantics and politics with ISPs. It 
> is trying to cling to every least penny it receives and spend none 
> of it on the resources it consumes or on making its delivery of 
> content more efficient. We have been in conversations with it in 
> which we've asked only for it to be equitable and pay us the same 
> amount per customer as it pays other ISPs, such as Comcast (since, 
> after all, they should be just as valuable to it). It has refused 
> to do even that much. That's why talks have, for the moment, broken 
> down and we are looking at other solutions.
> 
> --Brett Glass
> 
> At 09:58 PM 7/14/2014, Mike Lyon wrote:
> 
> >So we are splitting hairs with what "peering" means? And I am sure 
> >Netflix (or any other content / network / CDN provider) would be 
> >more than happy to statically route to you? Doubtful.
> >
> >Dude, put your big boy pants on, get an ASN, get some IP space, Â 
> >I am a smaller ISP than you I am sure and I have both. It's not 
> >rocket science. How are other networks suppose to take you 
> >seriously if you don't have an ASN?
> >
> >-Mike
> 
-- 
Mark Andrews, ISC
1 Seymour St., Dundas Valley, NSW 2117, Australia
PHONE: +61 2 9871 4742                 INTERNET: marka at isc.org