| Great idea, but charges should apply to _peers_, not customers. Peers and customers are currently indistinguishable. A peer is simply a customer who receives limited connectivity, usually constrained by BGP announcement filtering in both directions, for a heavy discount, sometimes as much as 100% off normal pricing. A supplier, on the other hand, is someone who sends you a bill, even if that bill is hugely discounted, with the expectation that if it is not paid, the connectivity offered as a service will be terminated. This taxonomy is convenient in that it leaves one with a small grey area wherein neither party sends the other a bill, and neither party has the right to demand that service continues for a particular amount of time. | Charging customers for announces prefixes merely creates an incentive | for backbone operators to announce more routes and, correspondingly, | collect more money. If network X is sending network Y too-long prefixes, or too many prefixes, network X may choose to filter them, or require that they be aggregated. A customer paying a larger amount of money is likelier to have this demand met than a customer with a very steep discount. A supplier, on the other hand, may choose to increase the bill when faced with a customer who sends inappropriate prefixes. In the grey area, who knows? So far the only answers there have been inbound filtering and proxy aggregation. Sean.