On Jan 31, 2014, at 1:29 PM, Matt Palmer <mpalmer@hezmatt.org> wrote:
On Fri, Jan 31, 2014 at 11:09:43AM -0500, John Curran wrote:
better utilization. It would be nice if there was a way to fairly "settle up" for the imputed cost of adding a given route to the routing table, as this would provide some proportionate backpressure on growth, would create incentives for deaggregate cleanup, etc. We don't have such a system, so it falls to each ISP to decide what route is worth accepting based on type and the offering peer's business relationship...
I almost hesitate to mention this, just in case I put ideas into some beancounter's head, but it seems to me that the cost model of carrying packets isn't that different to carrying routes. In both cases, practically everyone is acting as a middleman, and money flows hither and yon and (presumably) balances out in the end, with everyone having their costs covered with a little left over for the shareholders.
Meh, sort of…
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.
That’s the optimistic outcome. The pessimistic outcome is that they get rapidly depeered by everyone unwilling to pay $X/GB and then start losing customers because their customers can no longer reach anyone else’s customers through them. The reality probably lies somewhere in between. I suspect whoever chooses to conduct this little experiment first should be prepared for substantial pain. YMMV. Owen