On Mon, Jul 01, 2002 at 03:20:32PM -0400, Phil Rosenthal wrote:
I don't think "peering could not overcome corrupt financial officers and $3B in debt" equates to "peering has no relation to financial difficulties" exactly.
Here's a fun exercise: Drop your 5 busiest peers, and see if your operating costs a) increase, b) decrease, or c) remain the same. ---
Apples and oranges. Wcom isn't talking about dropping AT&T as a peer, they just don't want to peer with "Joe Six Pack ISP". Wcom would likely not peer with most ISPs, and I wouldn't expect them to. They gain absolutely nothing from it, and the small ISPs gain plenty. Wcom's costs only increase since they need "more ports".
Not apples and oranges. See the subject of this thread. The point is that they -do- have peering with the other 'big guys', who are largely inaccessible to the rest of the world as peers due to the insane peering requirements. Your statement:
The fact that they failed, having had such extensive peering, proves that peering has no relation to financial difficulties (in my mind, at least)
would argue that such peering gives them no financial benefit. Or, to look at it from the other side, it would argue that the rest of the ISPs out there (which include many which are much larger than Joe Sixpack) would see no financial benefit if they were able to get such peering themselves. If UUNET dropped their 5 largest peers, do you think it would not hurt them financially? I don't expect them to peer with Joe Sixpack ISP. I do expect them to peer with ISPs who have at least a reasonable backbone of their own and could account for, say, several hundred megabits/sec in exchanged traffic. If the big guy's cost only increases (be it Sprint, UUNET, or anyone else) then why will he want to peer even with someone who does meet his requirements? -c