
On Sun, 14 January 2001, Paul Vixie wrote:
> sean@donelan.com (Sean Donelan) writes:
> > If you look at Abovenet's traffic graphs, you'll notice Abovenet has a wide
> > variety of traffic balances with different providers.  Some in Abovenet's
> > favor (such as 3:1 with Sprint, 5:1 with Teleglobe) and some in the other
> > provider's favor (such as 1:3 with Exodus).  ...
> 
> "Favor"?  What, precisely, connotes "favor" in this regard?  Sending more, or
> receiving more?  And: why?

Which side of the debate do you want to take?


The traditional arguement is a network composed mostly of a few large data
centers, with lots of servers sending traffic is getting a "free ride" on
the network which built out nationwide and has POPs in every LATA.

UUNET deserves a return on its investment on all those wholesale dialup
POPs and circuits to underserved rural areas.  Abovenet is just cream
skimming in a few large metro areas, while UUNET does the hard work of
carrying that extra traffic imbalance.  Abovenet selling "cheap" bandwidth
because it doesn't have the cost of delievering the traffic that UUNET
has to pay.

The opposite side is Abovenet has invested a lot into its sites and MFN
into its networks.  It just choose to do it in a different way than UUNET.
Its more expensive to lay fiber in metro areas than rural areas.  It costs
a lot of money to operate the centers.  Whether the traffic is being paid
by the millions of $19.95 dialup users on UUNET's wholesale ports or
by the hundreds of hosters in Abovenet's sites, the traffic is paid.




