US/Canada International border concerns for routing

Tue Aug 22 05:38:37 UTC 2017

On 2017-08-09 10:11, Hiers, David wrote:
> That is what our lawyers are starting to figure out, too.  Very glad to see them converging on the tribal wisdom.

late to discussion.

You might get some organisations which require you to provide
intra-canada routes for privacy reasons. But at the moment there are no
laws that require it.

Also, you need to consider that the way the Internet is designed, should
a Montréal-Toroonto link go down, traffic will automatically reroute
Montréal-New-York-Chicago-Toronto. So it becomes hard to *guarantee*
intra-Canadian routes. (such arrangements do exist for military type of
classified private networks).

It is consumer pressure and advocacy groups who are raising the issue of
intra-Canada routing. (Patriot Act in USA gets NSA to listen to any/all
intl traffic, and Canada-USA-Canada traffic is considered such by USA).

But from a regulatory poimt of view, the most one could expect would be
a requireement to openly peer at exchanges where a netowrk has a
presence. (as opposed to garanteeing intra-canada routes). And even that
isn't on horizon at the moment.

Note that normal businesses want to peer because it reduces costs.  The
old incumbents such as Bell work on a monopoly mentality of forcing
people to buy transit from them, so allowing peering is against their
philosophy of forcing yo to buy transit. (and if you don't buy from
them, you then have to buy extra capacity to USA to connect to them).

Some US transit providers, after having been here for a while, start to
get their own intra-Canada links (such as Montréal to Toronto) where
traffic warrants. reduced latency is likely the biggest winner in this.