The argument about national backbones costing money is a red herring. OF COURSE they cost money. But they open business markets to you that are otherwise closed - being able to sell in multiple cities without the customer having to backhaul on their own, VPNs across geographical areas, etc. If you don't like the price:performance balance of that equation, then you shouldn't build one.
Well, this goes into "cutting off peers means your customers can't access mine." There's two problems with this: First, the key point is YOU can't access THEIRS without buying transit. Most ISPs aren't gonna permit this loss of connectivity and will buy transit.. it just won't be from the company that pulls the plug. Lets also note who its gonna hurt more.. the company with fewer customer sites that need to get accessed. The complaint ratio between the two groups are gonna be wholly lopsided. The smaller ISP will receive far more complaints than the larger one. In my view, whats being proposed has more or less been in the works for quite a while. Because of the customer's demands for 100% connectivity, there's not a whole lot to stand in the way. And as long as MFS/UUNET/WorldCom run the two biggest exchange points (and are thus getting paid exorbatant amounce for connectivity INTO that NAP -- thus making it so you really pay *3* times for a packet to cross the network -- along with various customer circuits into that NAP because of the "near exit" -- making it actually 4 times if you consider loop charges), there's no reason it can't continue. If it happens, it happens. And chances are that these peering fees will be quite high. For the big guys to buy from each other, the fees will more or less balance out. For those that depend on the peering, they'll have to bite the bullet and pay the fees. For those who can't afford the fees, they'll have to look for cheap transit (and possibly degraded service as a result). I doubt there will be any who can't afford transit. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Wayne Bouchard GlobalCenter web@primenet.com Primenet Network Engineering Internet Solutions for (602) 416-6422 800-373-2499 x6422 Growing Businesses FAX: (602) 416-9422 http://www.primenet.com http://www.globalcenter.net ----------------------------------------------------------------------