At 09:02 PM 7/16/97 +0000, Danny wrote:
Anyone care to take a stab at what places a provider in a given "tier-group"? Seems to me as though the large(st) providers are a bit harsher (naturally) than the smaller providers.
In my conference presentations on this subject, I divide Internet service providers into three categories based on peering relationships: 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. 2) The Near Peer Networks are ISPs that are trying to complete their peering agreements but are getting default transit somewhere. The Pseudo Peer Networks are running those thin no-money-down ATM "backbones" and are mostly web farmers pretending to be backbones or former bandwidth resellers that are trying to move from paying for transit to free peering. 3) The Bandwidth Resellers, many of whom are former PC BBS sysops, system integrators or computer retailers cum local ISPs, have a legitimate business buying T1s and T3s and reselling frame relay and T1s and dial access. A True Peer is any backbone that all the other True Peers consider a peer. I know it's circular, but it works in Hollywood. The bandwidth resellers don't have a beef with the True Peers since they and the True Peers are playing by the same rules (few big default-free transit backbones and lots of resellers). It's the Near Peers, playing by the same rules as the True Peers and Resellers, that are building infrastructure and backbones, trying to become True Peers and these worry the True Peers as emerging competition and more routing work. The Pseudo Peers try to appear as worthy Peers and get the True Peers in a snit, because they view the Pseudo Peers as parasites, never meaning to build backbones, sucking away their rightful web hosting clients and local access customers with reseller prices. --Kent