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I would venture to say that to WorldCom, all traffic is destined to a peer, or a customer, and they NEVER pay for traffic. Peering with them
is entirely a courtesy from them to you, as they can always see you through their current peers.
Reduced latency? Shorter hop counts? ("Hello, this is customer xxx, why does it take 27 hops for me to get to xyz.com?") Do these not benefit them in any way? --- Right, but Wcom peers with verio, bbn, sprint, att in just about every major city, so they are going to have low latency anyway, "most of the time". ---
The fact that they failed, having had such extensive peering, proves that peering has no relation to financial difficulties (in my mind, at least)
I don't think "peering could not overcome corrupt financial officers and $3B in debt" equates to "peering has no relation to financial difficulties" exactly. Here's a fun exercise: Drop your 5 busiest peers, and see if your operating costs a) increase, b) decrease, or c) remain the same. --- Apples and oranges. Wcom isn't talking about dropping AT&T as a peer, they just don't want to peer with "Joe Six Pack ISP". Wcom would likely not peer with most ISPs, and I wouldn't expect them to. They gain absolutely nothing from it, and the small ISPs gain plenty. Wcom's costs only increase since they need "more ports". --Phil