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

Fri May 16 19:11:56 UTC 2014

Christopher Morrow wrote the following on 5/16/2014 1:52 PM:
> On Fri, May 16, 2014 at 2:47 PM, Blake Hudson <blake at ispn.net> wrote:
>> in the context of this discussion I think it's silly for a residential ISP
>> to purport themselves to be a neutral carrier of traffic and expect peering
>> ratios to be symmetric
> is 'symmetric traffic ratios' even relevant though? Peering is about
> offsetting costs, right? it might not be important that the ratio be
> 1:1 or 2:1... or even 10:1, if it's going to cost you 20x to get the
> traffic over longer/transit/etc paths... or if you have to build into
> some horrific location(s) to access the content in question.
>
> Harping on symmetric ratios seems very 1990... and not particularly
> germaine to the conversation at hand.
I agree about the term being passe ...and that it never applied to ISPs 
...and that peering is about cost reduction, reliability, and 
performance. It seems to me that many CDNs or content providers want to 
setup peering relationships and are willing to do so at a cost to them 
in order to bypass "the internet middle men". But I mention traffic 
ratios because some folks in this discussion seem to be using it as 
justification for not peering. But hey, why peer at little or no cost if 
they can instead hold out and possibly peer at a negative cost?

--Blake