On Fri, 01 June 2001, Mike Leber wrote:

On 1 Jun 2001, Sean Donelan wrote:

...

So, can anyone explain why C&W, UUNET or Genuity care about traffic balance, other than to limit competition by providers who are better at attracting particular types of customers than them?

You have the cart before the horse (effect before cause), there are really two principles that come before the example policy effect above. They are truisms.

I understand that, however my interest was much more limited than launching an incindary device into another peering battle. I'm want to understand why a 1.5:1, or 2:1 balance is required. What technical purpose does it achieve. I've asked folks from large and small providers about this, and they've told me a variety of reasons. But none of the reasons, so far, have held technical merit in the final analysis. There were always alternatives which did not require maintaining a inverse market share balance between providers. ANS used to require cold potato routing, is it time to bring it back? I know, provider-based CIDR makes that difficult.