On Mon, 15 Jan 2001, Travis Pugh wrote:
I think what it comes down to, and what it has come down to at least since the inception of hosting companies who spew large amounts of traffic back at the access networks, is who gets paid twice for carrying the traffic? Does UUNET get paid twice for carrying the traffic, once by their customer that pays for dial or leased line access and once by the hosting company that pays for peering because their traffic ratio is off? This seems to be the status quo. The other way around would mean that the hosting company got paid twice for carrying the traffic.
... and if we bring the chicken and the egg syndrome into all of this, then who has most to gain that the internet is fast and efficient, the people who make content, the people who live off of the people who make content, the people who live off of the people consuming content or the people who consume the content? ... and where is the growth? ... and who gains from that? One might think that UUNET in this case would be happy that someone would provide content so that more users would want to buy even more bandwidth so that UUNET would make more money. On the other hand one might also think that UUNET would want their investment to last as long as possible and that upgrading is more expensive than making it possible for people to buy more bandwidth. Whatever is most important, I do not know. I know it's easy to argue for both ways. -- Mikael Abrahamsson email: swmike@swm.pp.se