"David Schwartz" <davids@webmaster.com> writes: | I'm not sure I believe that this tragedy of the commons exists where people | route on allocation boundaries. If I make Sprint carry an extra route just | for my little network, that helps all Sprint customers reach my little | network. Cool, so you can get them to contribute a fraction of the 50 cents you owe me? Since I live downstream from Sprint, I tell you what: I'll give you the first flap for free. And that's a generous offer, given that your little network represents approximately zero percent of my traffic, and I doubt I'll be complaining to my other personalities that I can't get at your fascinating content without subsidizing your network's globally-visible dynamicism. Sean. (who does, incidentally, subscribe to some pay-for-play web sites, for example, which helps them pay for a part of THEIR dynamicism. i must remember to ask for a 50 cent * n discount at renewal time...) P.S.: the point here, since it's easy to miss, is that a clearing house function is useful for containing complexity of negotiation, and is currently being done by the RIRs on behalf of their owners business opportunity: a tool which reliably lets one decide if prefix x is worth carrying in all its flapping glory, or whether it should be bitbucketed until a bill is paid