What is "Internet"? Let's channel Seth Breidbart briefly and call it the largest equivalence class in the reflexive transitive symmetric closure of the relationship "can be reached by an IP packet from". It

should be clear that the nature and extent of this network depends very much on the perspective of the connected device from which is it

measured.

At last, a definition we can all agree on! ;) Honestly this might be closest to the truth, but it's not quite the perception that the marauding forces of marketing have encouraged over the previous 10 years. Rather, the market which exists to support ISPs tends not to include people who understand the nature of the network, and its instability. Sadly, for many of the market constituents the "Internet" equates to the "Web"; for some of them it equates to a platform to support their applications; for very few of them does it equate to a unique perspective into a subset of possible IP relationships. As I said, this definition is closest to the reality today, but not even everybody on this knowledgeable mailing list feels happy with buying such a service, no less so the end-users at large.

Do people in Spain complain that they can't call numbers starting with +350, and insist on getting money back from their monthly bill? Or do they accept that their government has an ongoing dispute with the UK over whether Gibraltar is in fact part of Spain?

Good counter-example. Instead of trying to compare how this example of political dispute and the resulting customer satisfaction or frustration is similar to the Cogent-Level(3) situation, I'll simply acknowledge that my analogy, like most, is imperfect. I still hold to my fundamental point, however. The market has evolved to expect more than "Internet as an research experiment/hobbyist toy", and now expects the "Internet" to be a component of their critical infrastructure. Service providers that don't understand this, in addition to having unsatisfied customers, may perhaps incur outside intervention. Would that ultimately be so bad for end-users? Cheers, -Benson --- Benson Schliesser (email) mailto:bensons@savvis.net I barely understand my own thoughts, much worse those of my betters. Thus, the opinions expressed herein are not necessarily those of my employer. Ponder them at your own risk.