* Patrick W. Gilmore
On Nov 3, 2008, at 10:41 AM, Tore Anderson wrote:
Another point worth mentioning is that the traffic is going to flow between those two ISPs _anyway_.
I believe the events of 2-3 days ago disproves your assertion.
Having partitioned transit-free networks is going to continue to be the exception and not the rule, or at least I hope so...
Therefore, in many cases the only ones to profit from them not reaching a peering agreement (settlement-free or not) is their upstream(s), who is probably delighted to be able to charge them both for the transit traffic.
Again, supposed facts not in evidence.
It does happen. I've experienced it myself.
I mentioned in the thread earlier that it is entirely possible Eyeball Network saves money by turning down peering and paying a transit provider to deliver the packets where Eyeball Network wants.
But I never said that this could never be the case either, in fact I think you're right; it is indeed entirely possible that this in many cases is the reason for one network to turn down the other's peering request. If only one of the networks is geographically large or the proposed peering agreement does not have provisions about multiple peering locations (and respecting MED), it's probably even more likely to be the case. However, it is also entirely possible that the networks simply are too stubborn to either accept paid peering, to loosen up on any requirements of balanced ingress/egress ratio, or to commit to cold potato routing, or whatever. I suspect that the likelyhood of this beeing the case is dependant on the size of the networks involved, though. Regards, -- Tore Anderson