On Fri, May 02, 1997 at 09:56:38AM -0700, Wayne Bouchard wrote:
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 customer having to backhaul on their own, VPNs across geographical areas, etc. If you 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.
That sounds like extortion and a violation of the Sherman Act. Someone ought to look into this. I note that violations of the Sherman Act are criminal as well as civil matters, and if done in collusion (and lock-step changes in policy by "competitors" are one of the tests for this) you can even raise a RICO charge.
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.
There's a fix for this. Set up another peering point. -- -- Karl Denninger (karl@MCS.Net)| MCSNet - The Finest Internet Connectivity http://www.mcs.net/~karl | T1's from $600 monthly to FULL DS-3 Service | 99 Analog numbers, 77 ISDN, http://www.mcs.net/ Voice: [+1 312 803-MCS1 x219]| NOW Serving 56kbps DIGITAL on our analog lines! Fax: [+1 312 803-4929] | 2 FULL DS-3 Internet links; 400Mbps B/W Internal