On 29 Jun 2002, Vijay Gill wrote:
Mike Leber <mleber@he.net> writes:
Sprint's peers aren't equal to Sprint or each other when considered by revenue, profitability, number of customers, or geographical coverage.
A good proxy for the above is to ask the question:
Do X and Y feel they derive equal value (for some value of equal) by interconnecting with each other?
This incorrectly presumes that being equal is necessary, when in truth each party is going to have a threshold and method for determining the value of the exchange that is independent of the other parties preconceptions. Point in case, most networks care significantly more about what they get out of a peering session than what the their peers get out of it. And this is correct and valid because only by paying attention to the actual underlying economic reasons for making peering decisions will they be able to ensure they stay in business.
If they think they do, then an interconnection is set up between X and Y. However, if one party feels that they do NOT derive equal value by interconnecting with the other, than that party usually balks.
By your reasoning all ventures should be 50/50 partnerships, which they aren't. I'll concede if a network were to percieve themselves as a majority share holder and think themselves large enough to effect the underlying price of bandwidth in the market then they might focus primarily on how to prevent another network from making more money than them from a peering agreement, as you describe. However, based on all the bankruptcies they should be more focused on their own immediate operational costs and staying in business than worrying about any single competitor.
X states that they would only feel equal value is derived by both parties if traffic between X and the other party is n mb/s with a ratio of p:q. Y disagrees. They do not interconnect. This causes pain.
Again, this is proof of my first point above, that each network has its own method of evaluating peering and that their method matters more to them than what the peer thinks.
to make sense of their peering policy, just accept the fact that each company has policies that they believe to be in their best interests and omit the pretense of justifying this by the movement of heavenly bodies in the spheres.
I think we are in agreement here.
I figured, I just couldn't let you get away with the equal remark lest onlookers pickup bad attitudes. :-P Mike. +------------------- H U R R I C A N E - E L E C T R I C -------------------+ | Mike Leber Direct Internet Connections Voice 510 580 4100 | | Hurricane Electric Web Hosting Colocation Fax 510 580 4151 | | mleber@he.net http://www.he.net | +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+