In message <199705021656.JAA25880@typo.org>, Wayne Bouchard writes:
The argument about national backbones costing money is a red herring. OF COURSE they cost money. But they open business markets to you that are otherwise closed - being able to sell in multiple cities without the custome r having to backhaul on their own, VPNs across geographical areas, etc. If yo u don't like the price:performance balance of that equation, then you shouldn' t build one.
Well, this goes into "cutting off peers means your customers can't access mine." There's two problems with this: First, the key point is YOU can't access THEIRS without buying transit. Most ISPs aren't gonna permit this loss of connectivity and will buy transit.. it just won't be from the company that pulls the plug. Lets also note who its gonna hurt more.. the company with fewer customer sites that need to get accessed. The complaint ratio between the two groups are gonna be wholly lopsided. The smaller ISP will receive far more complaints than the larger one.
In my view, whats being proposed has more or less been in the works for quite a while. Because of the customer's demands for 100% connectivity, there's not a whole lot to stand in the way. And as long as MFS/UUNET/WorldCom run the two biggest exchange points (and are thus getting paid exorbatant amounce for connectivity INTO that NAP -- thus making it so you really pay *3* times for a packet to cross the network -- along with various customer circuits into that NAP because of the "near exit" -- making it actually 4 times if you consider loop charges), there's no reason it can't continue. If it happens, it happens. And chances are that these peering fees will be quite high. For the big guys to buy from each other, the fees will more or less balance out. For those that depend on the peering, they'll have to bite the bullet and pay the fees. For those who can't afford the fees, they'll have to look for cheap transit (and possibly degraded service as a result). I doubt there will be any who can't afford transit.
Based on the models I've run, the cost of peering should work out to a charge based on the cost of transit/ratio of customer networks/ non customer networks for the "larger ISP", i.e.: ISP A charges 60,000/month for a DS3, say the announce as customers 20% of global routeable IP, thus peering charges should be about 1/5 of that $60,000, or $12,000. Assuming ISP B charges $2000/month for a T-1, and announcies about .1% of global routeable IP space, or $2/month. So net cash flow between A and B is about $11,998/month. This doesn't include local loop charges, port charges, or the issue of different network design may result in different costs of peering. If the provider charges $20,000/month for DS3, then somewhere on the order of $4000/month would be a reasonable peering charge. At some point charges between differently sized networks will happen as the cost structures have to be balanced or it will not be viable in the long run. However that doesn't meen that NDAs and outrages peering charges are justifable. And if people use an exchange point and a route server, the costs of peering for large national providers could be reduced, and provide their customers better service, and be compensated for their real costs to do peering. All of the information to do the cost calculations is publicly available information, and unless some large ISPs are not being held to the same 80% utilization standard, (AGIS anyone?), then there isn't any real market distortion by using routable IP addresses. And its a lot easier than counting aggregate packet flows. If worse comes to worse, some large national provider will institute a policy similar and the rest will face the Net99/CIX scenario all over again. --- Jeremy Porter, Freeside Communications, Inc. jerry@fc.net PO BOX 80315 Austin, Tx 78708 | 1-800-968-8750 | 512-458-9810 http://www.fc.net