Since my name was invoked, I'll comment, even though I've been largely trying to stay out of this. But the question, of course, is not that UUNET wouldn't have connectivity to netaxs, but that it might/would have *poorer* connectivity. And the question is whether UUNET customers will notice, overall, a poorer quality of service due to the disconnection. The issue is really: If UUNET has direct peering via the MAEs with the providers or regionals in the DC area (MAE-East) and SF area (MAE-West), where maybe 20-25% of the net traffic in the US flows through (to pick a number), and a few packets start getting dropped or latency goes up to that much of the 'net, perhaps their customers might notice. And then, who suffers more? It's a shame that things might be looked at that way, but my take on it is that the equation is cost vs. cost (as my friend Dave Van Allen would insist that fun-loving ISPs understand and look at the business justifications for things) - UUNET has cost: { backbone bandwidth + engineering time + loss of revenue by enabling other providers to be "peers" at or near the top } for having peers that do not push 1gbit/sec inside their network and has to weight it against vs. the { possible cost of not having as good connectivity to N providers } As for what happens then, who knows? Pissing wars aren't good for anyone, so let's hope that none of them happen... Avi

You do not understand peering with this statement. If you peer with someone, you give them access to everything on your network route wise, but not to your other peers. So with that in mind, your statement is not true.

What the point is here, and yes, I am a UUnet customer, is one of my customers requests something from a network peer, netaxs.net for example, of UUnets, and next week, UUnet decides Avi's a dork (Avi's not a dork) and didn't pay the rape fee, so UUnet will no longer peer with netaxs.net. Now I have now way to retrive data from netaxs.net if that was their only way to get data onto UUnet's network.

Now I no longer have a compleate internet connection and UUnet has defaulted on their contract with me as they no longer are carrying the data I paid them for.

============================================================== Tim Flavin Internet Access for St Louis & Chicago Internet 1st, Inc Toll Free Sales & Support 800-875-3173 http://www.i1.net For more information email info@i1.net ==============================================================