From: Sean Doran <smd@cesium.clock.org> > If, say, mountainview.net ... branched out to Miami, and bought another > Alternet ISP T-1 connection out there, they would then be getting free > transit between them. I don't see that this is a problem. After all, if they bought two AlterNet connections, isn't being able to send traffic across AlterNet what they're *paying* for? Hmm. But what about the follwing situation. Two large carriers, P and Q, are interconnected at multiple sites, among them X and Y. Let's further suppose carrier P has two customers, C1 and C2, near X and Y respectively. What's to stop carrier P taking trafic from C1, giving it to Q at X, and getting it back at Y, and thence taking it to C2? That way, P (presumably) gets paid for carrying the traffic around, but Q does all the long-haul work. Yes, P has to pay Q for large enough access pipes, but isn't Q's charging model assuming that all customers have traffic profiles in which data, on average, travels approximately equal distances (since I assume it costs more money to ship 1 Mbit/sec 3K miles than it does 10 miles)? So, if a customer of Q can arrange to have all their data travel a long way, they can come out ahead of the game, i.e. with lower cost than actual cost. If so, I'd assume P can pay Q's access fess, and still come out ahead, which seems to me to be rather like getting something for nothing... Now, maybe I'm confused about the true costs? Noel