On 04/27/2014 06:18 PM, Jay Ashworth wrote:
From: "Hugo Slabbert" <hslabbert@stargate.ca> I guess that's the question here: If additional transport directly been POPs of the two parties was needed, somebody has to pay for the links. And the answer is: at whose instance (to use an old Bell term) is that
----- Original Message ----- traffic moving.
The answer is "at the instance of the eyeball's customers".
So there's no call for the eyeball to charge the provider for it.
Now, Jay, I don't often disagree with you, but today it occurred to me the business case here (I've had to put on my businessman's hat far too frequently lately, in dealing with trying to make a data center operation profitable, or at least break-even). This should be taken more as a 'devil's advocate' post more than anything else, and if I missed someone else in the thread making the same point, my apologies to the Department of Redundancy Department. Sure, the content provider is paying for their transit, and the eyeball customer is paying for their transit. But the content provider is further charging the eyeball's customer for the content, and thus is making money off of the eyeball network's pipes. Think like a businessman for a moment instead of like an operator. Now, I can either think of it as double dipping, or I can think of it as getting a piece of the action. (One of my favorite ST:TOS episodes, by the way). The network op in me thinks double-dipping; the businessman in me (hey, gotta make a living, no?) thinks I need to get a piece of that profit, since that profit cannot be made without my last-mile network, and I'm willing to 'leverage' that if need be. How many mail-order outfits won't charge for a customer list? Well, in this case it's actual connectivity to customers, not just a customer list. The argument about traffic congestion is just a strawman, disguising the real, profit-sharing, motive.