Allegedly Tier 1s in Wikipedia

Mon Aug 1 18:19:33 UTC 2022

> On 1 Aug 2022, at 11:10 am, Tom Paseka via NANOG <nanog at nanog.org> wrote:
> 
> Paying for "peering", doesn't stop you being a tier-1. 
> 
> Being a Tier-1 means you are "transit free" (technical term, not commercial). No one is transiting your routes to other Tier-1 providers. 
> 

There are a lot of potential interpretations of “Tier 1” and often folk use the one that benefits their own classification (obviously!). The one I think corresponds to the conventional interpretation is "I’m a Tier 1 because I have a SKA peering agreement with other Tier 1 networks and I pay no other network for transit or peering”, or more informally, “I’m a Tier 1 because I pay nobody and everyone pays me, except for my peers.”

I suspect that what goes on is “I’m a Tier 1 because I say so, and noone has contradicted me yet!" :-)

Geoff