On Fri, Jan 31, 2014 at 4:29 PM, Matt Palmer <mpalmer@hezmatt.org> wrote:
Imagine one of the big players saying, "we're going to charge you $X per route you send to us" (just like transit agreements that state, "we will charge you $X/GB of traffic"), or "your contract allows you to send us N routes" (just like, "your contract allows you to send us N Gb of traffic"). About 15 minutes later everyone else would start doing it, to recoup the costs of sending routes to that provider. Peering would be considered not only if the volume of traffic was mutually advantageous, but also if the routes exchanged were mutually advantageous.
Hi Matt, It doesn't work. Here's why not: First, there's an error in your bytes model. You express it as "your contract allows you to send us N Gb of traffic" but that's not accurate. It's send AND receive Gb of traffic. The two bottoms of the pyramid, sender and recipient both pay. Their fees combine with other fees as their ISP pays the next ISP up until it reaches two ISPs who "peer" with each other. The peers trade bytes which each has been paid by their endpoint to move to and from the other. This model works. We know it works because the Internet currently runs on it. Your route originator pays to have his route introduced into the system, and his ISP pays to have it introduced further up, and so on up to the top of the pyramid where two ISPs peer. Now you have a problem. How does the other side of the pyramid get paid carry the routes on the way back down? There are at least a couple of potential solutions to this problem. One solution is that you auction off the right to announce a covering route for each /8. Then your ISP deals with paying everybody in a reliable set of transit chains that announces your route to that aggregation carrier. The "auction" is sort upside down where instead of paying for the right to announce the covering route a company bids on offering the best price cross reliability guarantee on a RAND basis. Everybody is free to carry your specific route, of course, but those who choose not to will still be fully connected to you via the covering /8 route. Even if the packet starts its trip via the covering route, it won't necessarily reach the aggregator. As soon as it enters any network carrying your specific announcement, the packet veers off towards you. Another solution would be some kind of international route clearinghouse. Everybody operating BGP on the Internet joins the clearinghouse and specifies how much they charge to carry a route. Then for each route you wish to introduce, you pick all the ASes whose price you're willing to pay. You pay the clearinghouse. The clearinghouse does the accounting and provides each AS with their payment and the list of routes they're being paid to accept upon receiving an advertisement. Analysts with the clearinghouse evaluate all the ASes, their geography, size, connectedness and their required payments. They collect ASes into technically useful sets with an aggregate price which buyers can use instead of having to examine each AS for themselves. By design, these sets try to exclude small-time ASes asking for too much money (or any money) to carry your route. Finally, anybody who is not a "tier-1" transit free provider adds a default route to one or several of their upstream transit providers to carry packets for the routes they chose not to accept. So, if the clearinghouse analysts did their jobs well and you bought the route sets which made sense, you remain fully connected. Regards, Bill Herrin -- William D. Herrin ................ herrin@dirtside.com bill@herrin.us 3005 Crane Dr. ...................... Web: <http://bill.herrin.us/> Falls Church, VA 22042-3004