Carrier classification

Tue May 16 02:27:42 UTC 2017

On Mon, May 15, 2017 at 6:44 PM Bradley Huffaker <bhuffake at caida.org> wrote:

> On Sun, May 14, 2017 at 09:24:18AM +0200, Mark Tinka wrote:
> >
> > Nowadays, I'm hearing this less and less, but it's not completely gone.
>
> Putting aside the question of their importance, there is a small number
> of ISPs that do no pay for transit. If you don't call them Tier 1, what
> do you call them? Transit Free Providers (TFPs)?

I think the broader and more relevant question is -- Does it matter who
pays who ? Why name an irrelevant characteristic?

Cogent may not buy transit but i would not purchase their service since
they fail to have full internet reach (google and HE)

And xyz incumbent may have a poor network, but they may get free peering or
may get paid-peering because of their incumbent / monopoly status... that
is not a reason for me to purchase from them or think they are an elite
tier 1.

The dynamica of the day are more around reach and quality, not some legacy
measure of how market-failure facilitate anti-social behavior

>
> --
>     the value of a world model is not how accurately it captures reality
>     but how often it leads us to take appropriate action
>