Re: True Peers, Near Peers, Pseudo Peers, and Bandwidth Resellers

At 07:26 PM 7/20/97 -0700, Kent W. England wrote:

1) The True Peer Backbones are those ISPs that carry the bulk of the Internet access traffic, run default free, and expect everyone else to buy transit from themselves or another True Peer.

Agreed. To sum it up: It seems that the general use of 'tiers' is based on who carries a network's IP traffic. .A first tier provider does not purchase transit from anyone .A second tier provider buys from a first tier .A third tier provider buys from a second tier provider and so on... generally there are a few first tiers who peer at many locations and many second tiers who are at one or two IXs and have a transit agreement, and zillions of people who buy T1s and T3s and resell.