Roger Bohn <Rbohn@UCSD.edu> wrote: At 8:36 PM -0700 10/24/96, Vadim Antonov wrote:
Note that i didn't even talk about less measurabe, but way too more important things like hosting of information suppliers. Say, Big Provider connects 1000 web sites; Small Provider hosts 1 site -- benefit from peering in terms of Web site diversity to the Big Provider's customers is 0.1%. To Small Provider's customers the benefit of peering is 99.9%.
Oops, this has an arithmetic fallacy. Assuming that Big Provider also has 1000x more customers than Small Provider, and that all 1001 web sites are equally attractive, then there are 1000 BP customers each with a .001 chance of wanting to surf the SP web site. Compare this with 1 SP customer with a .999 chance of wanting to surf a BP web site, and a .001 chance of surfing the SP web site.
No, this is not about mutual traffic -- this is about benefit to _a_ customer. Your computation is correct but is completely irrelevant from the point of view of a customer. They're interested in reacheability, not traffic at some exchange point. I.e. each small ISP's customer derives 99.9% of benefit from the peering, while large ISP's customer derives only 0.01%. Hence, the large ISP can force small ISP to pay up -- without connectivity to a large ISP the small ISP will be dead pretty soon. This is exactly like grocery chains which can (and do) force consumers to pay up for food -- although you can grow your own tomatoes in your backyard and probably sell them to those grocery chains. Good chances are, they're not interested. --vadim