On Mon, Sep 13, 2010 at 1:01 PM, Brian Johnson <bjohnson@drtel.com> wrote:
The network could deliver "cost-reimbursable" peering, in which any service provider above a particular size is by regulation compelled to provide peering at the cost of the basic connection in at least one location in each state in which they operate Internet infrastructure. As a matter of simple fairness, someone else has already paid them to move the packets. Why should you have to pay them more than the cost of the port?
So for clarity... who pays for the peering?
Hi Brian, Whichever party forces the other to accept peering under the regs. Of course, that's not what would happen. People being people, what would happen is that having been forced that close to balance, most of the companies would go ahead and offer settlement free peering to whoever showed up at locations where they peer with anyone else. Ethernet ports are relatively cheap, even on big iron, and their "generosity" positions them at the next regulatory challenge to say, "See, fairness doesn't require us to unbundle our fiber services because we already have open third-party access here." And unlike open peering, unbundling really is expensive and difficult.
A small number of transit-frees would resent it, but it would damage them only in that it levels the playing field for small businesses, enhancing the small businesses' capabilities without enhancing their own.
HUH? Inanimate objects (transit-frees) do not have the ability to resent.
Providers being forced to do something do not resent it (unless they are personally Invested), but they do have to recover their costs and as such would have to raise rates given nothing else changes.
By stating "resent," I suppose I'm personifying a process in which a large company warns of dire consequences for the consumer should it be forced to accept reasonable regulation after which the consequences either don't materialize at all or show up in some other way significantly less destructive than the obstructed behavior. Regards, Bill Herrin -- William D. Herrin ................ herrin@dirtside.com bill@herrin.us 3005 Crane Dr. ...................... Web: <http://bill.herrin.us/> Falls Church, VA 22042-3004