Not that I agree at all with AGIS's new stance on peering and market domination but we have to understand that the "friendly" Internet has long since past. Every major provider now has very strict provisions for peering. These are obviously in their best interests for whatever reasons. Frankly, I'd rather have straight-forward peering requirements and policies than CAIS's lack of policy and cooperation. We made an initial peering request with CAIS, who is only on mae-east to the best of my knowledge, almost 3 months ago. No peering has yet been established, nor has any contract been received. Until CAIS gets their act together with new peerings I think it is rather hypocritical to be attacking AGIS for at least having a policy with the same end result as yours. Robert Bowman Exodus Communications Inc.
Interesting speech from Peter Kline at NANOG today...it seems that AGIS's peering requirements are now so strict that AGIS today would not peer with AGIS of only a few months ago. Then there's Peter's comment to Ron Burleson, Cheif Operating Officer of CAIS Internet (some of you know that CAIS had a very good relationship with Net99, which continued for a while under AGIS.) "Ron, we're going to squish you like a bug." Peter is doing wonders for inter-provider relations. What do y'all say that the rest of us follow the older, more friendly model, instead of trying to kill each other? Sure, a lot of us are in competition. From today's speech, it seems that AGIS is is more competition than the rest of us. But personally, if I were a small or mid-size provider, I'd rather buy service from somebody that I've seen to be in /friendly/ competition with their peers -- that way, once I got big enough to strike out on my own, I could stay friendly with my old provider on a peer instead of a customer level. This was the intention with the Net99 deal, back when Net99 was known as "the backbone that doesn't suck."
Back to the point -- like it or not, we all rely on each other and each others' networks to make the Internet happen. We can follow the AGIS model and cut each others' throats until we really are just a bunch of autonomous systems with the occasional path between, or we can interconnect -- network, to use a more laoded term. I think we should be a network.
(Please note that while I am speaking only for myself, CAIS's business plan is more on the friendly side.)
-- J.D. Falk <lart@cais.net> Network Operations Center <noc@cais.net> CAIS Internet Office (703) 448-4470 McLean, Virginia, USA NOC 1-888-CAIS-NOC