-----Original Message----- From: Sean Donelan [mailto:sean@donelan.com] Sent: Tuesday, June 05, 2001 10:14 PM To: nanog@merit.edu Subject: C&W/PSI restore connectivity (peering?) Re: C&W Peering

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I would be interested in hearing what folks who once worked as the "peering coordinator" for a large ISP, and later worked as a smaller ISP trying to negotiate from different sides of the table think. I believe every major ISP has turned over their peering staff at least once, and some multiple times.

Do the views hold constant no matter where they are, or are they flexible depending whether they are currently working at the big ISP or at the startup ISP?

An attempt to answer your question without inviting or inciting a debate or detailed discussion [mostly since I couldn't/wouldn't participate] in this forum about the specifics of Worldcom's peering policies or practices: Having been the one responsible for peering for all of Worldcom's IP networks, (including UUNET, ANS, Compuserve, Gridnet, and ~15 other large ASes around the globe that they operate) and having been the one who authored 99% of the most-recently released UUNET peering policy, and having left there to build [from scratch] a global IP backbone which will need direct connectivity to UUNET, I can give you my perspective from both sides of the table. My views on peering, and how an entity should position itself do indeed hold constant. Peering decisions are not technical decisions-- they are business decisions that have an economic impact. No matter what the original intentions were, the major IP networks out there today are all doing business to make money by selling connectivity. How they respond on issues such as peering plays a significant part on their bottom line, and they act accordingly in almost every case. Somewhere close to the heart of the problem is that there must be a line that separates the set of networks that you inter- connect with for free, [or for non-traditional customer pricing,] and the set of networks that you do not... and you'll never get a useful enough sized group of people [that is equally representative of the mix of interests out there] to agree on where that line should be drawn. In the meantime, organizations can draw that line wherever they choose. As this is true for UUNET, Sprint, Genuity, and C&W, it is also true for Aleron. We'll make decisions based on what is best for our customers, our network, and for our business. The position that Aleron will take is different than the position that UUNET will take, even though my views hold constant. Personally, I believe that someone will identify and leverage an opportunity based on all of the market pressures surrounding inter-provider peering, and we'll see a whole new mechanism or method for dealing with "non-customer" inter-network IP traffic exchange. Aleron certainly intends to make great progress in this space. Cheers, - jsb -- Jeff Barrows SVP, Global Networks Aleron Internet http://www.aleron.com +1 703 287 4224 Office