Folks here may find the below interesting. also available here.. http://www.interesting-people.org/200101/0015.html JeffH ----- Date: Mon, 08 Jan 2001 16:01:33 -0500 To: ip-sub-1@majordomo.pobox.com From: Dave Farber <farber@cis.upenn.edu> Subject: IP: A watershed event has occurred with no fanfare... Mime-Version: 1.0 Sender: owner-ip-sub-1@admin.listbox.com Precedence: list Reply-To: farber@cis.upenn.edu Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed Content-Length: 2706

Date: Mon, 08 Jan 2001 13:41:14 -0700 From: Rodney Joffe <rjoffe@centergate.com> To: Dave Farber <farber@cis.upenn.edu> Subject: A watershed event has occurred with no fanfare...

Hello Dave,

As you probably know from your time at the FCC, as well as your earlier 'net history, probably the most controversial and secretive subject relating the the true backbone, and infrastructure of the Internet, has been that of peering and peering relationships. For clarification, peering in the Internet sense is the exchange of traffic between two networks without filtering, limitation, or fee.

As the founder of the original Genuity, in 1993-4 I was the last of the networks to be party to the multi-lateral peering agreement that made the commercial Internet work. From that moment on, it became virtually impossible for anyone else to connect and exchange traffic with the rest of the Internet without paying a transit or traffic fee to someone else. The whole subject became mired in obfuscation and secrecy, and over the next 7 years, the company that everyone needed to peer with but no new company could was UUNet (now Worldcom/MCI/UUNet). Even with the other major networks at the time (Sprint, MCI, BBN, AT&T, IBM etc.) this was difficult, because the secret sauce seemed to be finding out what a given network's peering requirement was, and then meeting those requirements. And no major network ever published it's requirement.

The requirement was generally political, but articulated in some vague technical specification (e.g. to be present at 5 public exchange points, with a point-to-point clear channel T3 between all points, and at least one redundant path between any two exchange points, etc.).

So the rest of the Internet industry basically gave up on ever being able to join the chosen few who peered at the center of the Internet without paying any form of settlement fees.

Then, apparently in the last few days, a clear statement on peering policy and requirements has appeared on the UUNet website - see http://www.uu.net/peering/ This is a remarkable document in that for the very first time ever, in a public form, it sets standards for settlement-free (i.e. no charge) peering with UUnet, the world's largest Internet network.

If I understand the document correctly, anyone who meets their clear requirements will be able to exchange traffic with them at no charge.

This will undoubtedly change the landscape of the Internet.

Regards, -- Rodney Joffe CenterGate Research Group, LLC. http://www.centergate.com "Technology so advanced, even we don't understand it!"(SM)

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