On Sat, 26 Oct 1996, Jeremy Porter wrote:
As I said, my main point was that the Economist's model was seriously flawed. ... Of course, as long as there are more users of the Internet located in the US, and more content sites in the US, and the interesting applications located in the US, there will be a greater value to the non-us IPs to drop lines in, and as our Asian friends have pointed out it is often cheaper to drop lines to the West coast of the US than to drop inter-asia links.
This is just another seriously flawed model.
If companies like Global Sprintlink, Cable and Wireless, etc, are going into non-US peering locations, then it is already changing.
Yes it is already changing. But as far as I can see, Global SprintLink represents the old US-centric model: GSL is the international arm of SprintLink and essentially sells bandwidth into the States. C&W is setting itself up as a global backbone provider.
However compared to the amount of Internet bandwidth in the US, compared to elsewhere, I seriously doubt that there is any kind of siginifcant subisidy to US users.
I know it's hard to think about these things, but a T1 across the Atlantic costs us 235 times as much as a T1 to MAE West. Comparing Mbps is a joke.
(Just because it costs non-US based ISPs more to play the fully connected game, doesn't mean there is a signficant cost difference, just a market imbalance.
Yes 235:1 is a bit of a market imbalance; some might say that it is a significant cost difference. ) -- Jim Dixon VBCnet GB Ltd +44 117 929 1316 fax +44 117 927 2015 http://www.uk.vbc.net VBCnet West +1 408 971 2682 fax +1 408 971 2684