Observations of an Internet Middleman (Level3) (was: RIP

Thu May 15 18:53:54 UTC 2014

> Throttling is taking, say, a link from 10G and applying policy to constrain=
>  it to 1G, for example.

Throttling is also trying to cram 20G of traffic through that same 10G
link.

> What if a peer wants to go from a balanced relation=
> ship to 10,000:1, well outside of the policy binding the relationship?

What if you're running a 10G port at saturation in both directions and
you decide to stop accepting announcements from the peer on that port?
Now you have a 10,000:0 ratio.  Then what?

> Should we just unquestionably toss out our published policy =96 which is consis=
> tent with other networks =96 and ignore expectations for other peers?

What's your goal at the end of the day?

You have customers who are paying you for connectivity to "Teh Interwebz".

Do you have an obligation to run a dedicated 100GbE to each and every
host on the planet?  No.

Do you have an obligation to make a reasonable effort to move the 
traffic that your customer is paying you for?  Yes.

At the end of the day, if I'm your customer and I'm trying to pull
50Mbps of data on my 50Mbps connection that I am buying from you, 
then it seems like a reasonable thing to expect that you'll have
the 50Mbps of capacity to actually fulfill the demand.  That does
not mean that I will actually GET 50Mbps - it just means that you
should be making a reasonable effort and especially that you are 
not actively sabotaging it, by aggregating it through a congested 
10Gbps port, or forcing the packets through a congested peer, or
any of a number of other underhanded things.  

If you cannot figure out how to arrange your transit and peering
affairs in a manner that allows you to deliver on what you've sold
to customers in the current unregulated model, I think you'll find
that the alternative of regulation is very much less palatable.

So, to answer your question, yes, if you're unable to figure out 
that Netflix is always going to generate tons more traffic than it
receives, and that your customers desperately want to get good
connectivity to there, then that's dumb.  Perhaps you should 
figure out how to arrange peering with sites where there's 
obviously going to be an unrectifiable traffic imbalance.

You're a service provider.  What should your goal be?  I would
have thought it obvious:  Provide the service.

... JG
-- 
Joe Greco - sol.net Network Services - Milwaukee, WI - http://www.sol.net
"We call it the 'one bite at the apple' rule. Give me one chance [and] then I
won't contact you again." - Direct Marketing Ass'n position on e-mail spam(CNN)
With 24 million small businesses in the US alone, that's way too many apples.