RE: Cogent/Level 3 depeering
I would think in NANOG that one would know the simple fact that 'The Complete Internet' is complete and utter fiction, and does not exist. What does exist is a complex, dynamic, even stochastic set of relationships between autonomous networks, who can pick and choose their relationships at whim.
Customers don't want to pay for a "stochastic set of relationships", they will pay for the "Internet" however. It's like paying for a telephone that could only call a subset of the world's telephone users. And the solution (assuming you wanted global reachability) was to buy multiple telephone services from different providers, but even then the reachability that those providers offered would change over time. Would you be happy to rely on telephone for critical business (or other) functions? Call me crazy if you'd like, but I tend to think that peering on the Internet is too important... -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.
Customers don't want to pay for a "stochastic set of relationships", they will pay for the "Internet" however.
Perhaps we have lied to the them? The internet has always been a stochastic set of relationships -- some relationships of which are based upon two people getting drunk together at the right place, at the right time. Is anyone going to deny this? Further, the internet has always been a best-effort medium. We, as xSP's, have done our best to make the 'best' in 'best effort' as good as we can, to varying levels of success. The fact that the internet is hugely successful, and mostly reliable, is due to smart people and some level of luck. Not because someone peers with someone else. It wasn't designed this way.
It's like paying for a telephone that could only call a subset of the
Please, for the love of god, do not make analogies to the phone network.
Call me crazy if you'd like, but I tend to think that peering on the Internet is too important...
Do you think a thread which has made 100 posts on nanog, with people coming out of the woodwork who I haven't seen in years, is something that anyone things is not important? -- Alex Rubenstein, AR97, K2AHR, alex@nac.net, latency, Al Reuben Net Access Corporation, 800-NET-ME-36, http://www.nac.net
Alex Rubenstein wrote:
Further, the internet has always been a best-effort medium.
Can someone please explain how Level 3 is making a "best effort" to connect their customers to Cogent's customers? Various people have stated that uneven data flows (e.g. from mostly-content networks to mostly-eyeball networks) is a good reason to not peer. I'd love to know how it improves Level 3's network to have data from Cogent arrive over some *other* connection rather than directly from a peering connection. Do they suddenly, magically, no longer have backhaul that mostly-content data across their own backbone to their users who have requested it if it should come in from one of their *other* peers who (in normal peering fashion) hot-potato hands it off to them at the first opportunity, rather than coming in directly from Cogent? I don't think so. So why break off peering??? AFAICT there's only one reason to break off peering, and it's to force Cogent to pay (anyone) to transit the data. Why does L3 care if Cogent sends the data for free via peering, or pays someone ELSE to transit the data? I think this is about a big bully trying to force a smaller player off of the big guys' playing field (tier 1 peering). From where I sit it looks like an anti-competitive move that is not a "best effort" to serve their customers but a specific effort to put another (smaller) competitor out of business (of being a transit-free or mostly transit-free backbone) by forcing them to pay (someone), forcing their costs up. Level 3 must know they are no longer putting for a "best effort" for their own customers to connect them to the "internet" (as their customers see it, the "complete internet" that their customers have come to expect). I Am Not A Lawyer. (duh?) IMHO all L3 customers have a valid argument that Level 3 is in default of any service contract that calls for "best effort" or similar on L3's part. I also believe that Cogent has a valid argument that Level 3's behavior is anti-competitive in a market where the tier 1 networks *collectively* have a 100% complete monopoly on the business of offering transit-free backbone internet services. As such, L3's behavior might fall into anti-trust territory - because if Cogent caves in over this and buys transit for the traffic destined for L3 then what's to stop the rest of the tier 1 guys from following suit and forcing Cogent to buy transit to get to *all* tier 1 networks? Then who will they (TINT) force out next? What's to stop a big government (like the US) from stepping in and attempting to regulate peering agreements, using the argument that internet access is too important to allow individual networks to bully other networks out of the market - at the expense of customers - and ultimately resulting in less competition and higher rates? Is this type of regulation good for the internet? OTOH is market consolidation good for the internet? I don't like this slippery slope, I don't like it one little bit. jc
On Thu, Oct 06, 2005 at 10:54:37PM -0700, JC Dill wrote:
Various people have stated that uneven data flows (e.g. from mostly-content networks to mostly-eyeball networks) is a good reason to not peer. I'd love to know how it improves Level 3's network to have data from Cogent arrive over some *other* connection rather than directly from a peering connection. Do they suddenly, magically, no longer have backhaul that mostly-content data across their own backbone to their users who have requested it if it should come in from one of their *other* peers who (in normal peering fashion) hot-potato hands it off to them at the first opportunity, rather than coming in directly from Cogent?
I don't think so.
So why break off peering???
AFAICT there's only one reason to break off peering, and it's to force Cogent to pay (anyone) to transit the data. Why does L3 care if Cogent sends the data for free via peering, or pays someone ELSE to transit the data?
First off, why do you assume that peering is a right to which people are entitled? Level 3 operates a network, a pretty darn big and successful one (well big at any rate), and it apparently does a good job delivering the bits or it wouldn't have as many customers as it does. Why *must* they give another network free access to their network if they don't feel that it is mutually beneficial? You seem to be making the argument that because YOU think it is mutually beneficial, therefore (3) must be doing something evil. Beneficial is in the eye of the beholder, and Cogent could just as easily have been the one to decide it wasn't beneficial to them. Second, there are serious some serious fallacies in the argument that "the bits have to go there anyways". The vast majority of the Internet is multihomed in one way or another, especially the closer you get to the big Tier 1's. By my count, Level 3 has over 57,000 customer prefixes. I don't have any data about how many of those Cogent was actually using before-hand (though I'm sure someone does), but we know that roughly 4,000 some prefixes were single homed and couldn't be reached any other way. I'd be willing to venture a guess that while Cogent was probably not using anywhere near 57,000 prefixes from (3), they were using a heck of a lot more than 4,000 before the depeering notice and traffic depref, and that those prefixes were substantially trafficked. There is also this thing called BGP path selection, and one of the important criteria is AS-PATH length, so making the path to 3356 longer may have diverted a significant amount of traffic away from Cogent at the source of their multihomed customers. A depeering would combine both effects, Cogent would immediately depref, and the longer AS-PATH would shift traffic away from this path. Even if reaching (3) didn't cost Cogent a dime, depeering may still have been a viable method of traffic engineering. The bottom line is that we have no idea what was really going on, but there are loads of reasons why (3) would want to depeer Cogent that don't have anything to do with forcing them to pay for transit. I don't think anyone who depeers another network actually expects to see a dime in transit business from the depeered network any time in the immediate future anyways.
I think this is about a big bully trying to force a smaller player off of the big guys' playing field (tier 1 peering). From where I sit it looks like an anti-competitive move that is not a "best effort" to serve their customers but a specific effort to put another (smaller) competitor out of business (of being a transit-free or mostly transit-free backbone) by forcing them to pay (someone), forcing their costs up. Level 3 must know they are no longer putting for a "best effort" for their own customers to connect them to the "internet" (as their customers see it, the "complete internet" that their customers have come to expect).
If Cogent can't stay in business if (3) decides that there is no benefit to giving them free access to all of their customers, and infrastructure necessary to deliver it, they were never a peer to begin with. Peering is about mutual benefit, not entitlement. Cogent makes the same value judgements when it decides if it is going to peer with another network or not, it is no different here than it is there. Cogent routinely turns away smaller peers for peering and suggests that they buy transit instead, are you going to accuse them of anti-competetive practices next?
I also believe that Cogent has a valid argument that Level 3's behavior is anti-competitive in a market where the tier 1 networks *collectively* have a 100% complete monopoly on the business of offering transit-free backbone internet services. As such, L3's behavior might fall into anti-trust territory - because if Cogent caves in over this and buys transit for the traffic destined for L3 then what's to stop the rest of the tier 1 guys from following suit and forcing Cogent to buy transit to get to *all* tier 1 networks? Then who will they (TINT) force out next?
What exactly is the business of selling transit-free backbone internet services? Being a transit free backbone is a silly marketing ploy at best, at worst it makes you inflexible and vulnerable to exactly the kind of outages (3) is suffering when someone refuses to transit routes to the. Besides, I don't think (3) or any of the other large networks are doing all that well financially with their monopoly. If anything this makes some strong points about exactly how non- monopolistic the situation really is. Think about it, despite the fact that Level 3 provides transit to 1/3rd of the Internet by prefix count (a silly measurement I realize, but its all I've got :P), the vast majority of the customers and the Internet manage to route around this particular issue. That is because the vast majority (over 90% it seems) of (3)'s customers are multihomed, and those networks can be routed around or donut peered around. For example, several large cable MSOs are (3) customers, but peer with other networks. My company peer with a lot of them, and according to our netflow statistics we donut around over 95% of the potential traffic that could go to a (3) peer by peering with their customers and alternate providers to multihomed customers. This is the kind of thing that is happening across the world and across the board, most sizable networks are perfectly capable of bypassing the Tier 1's for the vast majority of the traffic. In fact that is one of the key reasons why Cogent, a much smaller company, is as large or larger than (3) in terms of absolute traffic volume. The Tier 1's are in a losing battle, as more and more of the bits that they used to handle and bill as on-net traffic is shifted away from them, and instead move directly between major content networks and major eyeball networks. It is not unexpected to see them tightening policies around the customers that they DO have, it is one of the few resources they have.
What's to stop a big government (like the US) from stepping in and attempting to regulate peering agreements, using the argument that internet access is too important to allow individual networks to bully other networks out of the market - at the expense of customers - and ultimately resulting in less competition and higher rates? Is this type of regulation good for the internet? OTOH is market consolidation good for the internet?
I don't like this slippery slope, I don't like it one little bit.
Hopefully, sanity. Whether you believe it or not, the Internet *IS* best effort. If you don't like it, or you aren't happy with it, buy from someone else who makes a better effort. Speaking of slippery slopes, how would you like to not be able to block traffic to your network from people you consider to be spam sites, because you are harming global reachability and potentially trying to force those sites out of business? Same argument, different benefit for you. -- Richard A Steenbergen <ras@e-gerbil.net> http://www.e-gerbil.net/ras GPG Key ID: 0xF8B12CBC (7535 7F59 8204 ED1F CC1C 53AF 4C41 5ECA F8B1 2CBC)
On Fri, Oct 07, 2005 at 03:17:53AM -0400, Richard A Steenbergen wrote:
On Thu, Oct 06, 2005 at 10:54:37PM -0700, JC Dill wrote:
AFAICT there's only one reason to break off peering, and it's to force Cogent to pay (anyone) to transit the data. Why does L3 care if Cogent sends the data for free via peering, or pays someone ELSE to transit the data?
First off, why do you assume that peering is a right to which people are entitled?
I didn't read that... I think the point is more "why not," not "Level3 is evil."
The bottom line is that we have no idea what was really going on, but there are loads of reasons why (3) would want to depeer Cogent that don't have anything to do with forcing them to pay for transit. I don't think anyone who depeers another network actually expects to see a dime in transit business from the depeered network any time in the immediate future anyways.
There is the issue of precedent, which neither network wants to set. If you cave on a game of chicken, others will follow suit, like a bad mass adoption of norton's art of peering. What caused the initial chess move, as you say, is hard to fathom, until we hear a statement on it from Level3.
not, it is no different here than it is there. Cogent routinely turns away smaller peers for peering and suggests that they buy transit instead, are you going to accuse them of anti-competetive practices next?
I'm not sure the analogy applies here, given the size of Cogent.
Hopefully, sanity. Whether you believe it or not, the Internet *IS* best effort. If you don't like it, or you aren't happy with it, buy from someone else who makes a better effort. Speaking of slippery slopes, how would you like to not be able to block traffic to your network from people you consider to be spam sites, because you are harming global reachability and potentially trying to force those sites out of business? Same argument, different benefit for you.
Unfortunately, Richard, you are using logic. What happens when depeering hits the public press is that the federal government starts watching it again. We've seen this over and over, and unfortunately with govt. churn, the same questions and hearings transpire. While I agree with the best effort statement, historically the govt./doj has started to get involved when mass standoffs occur like this one. -- Jay Adelson
On Thu, 6 Oct 2005, JC Dill wrote:
to pay (anyone) to transit the data. Why does L3 care if Cogent sends the data for free via peering, or pays someone ELSE to transit the data?
Anything to increase a competitors spending must be good, right? The more expenses a competitor has, the higher their price when they sell to customers, and the less likely they are to take potential customers? -- Mikael Abrahamsson email: swmike@swm.pp.se
On Thu, 6 Oct 2005, JC Dill wrote:
Alex Rubenstein wrote:
Further, the internet has always been a best-effort medium.
Can someone please explain how Level 3 is making a "best effort" to connect their customers to Cogent's customers?
thats not what alex means as you know. and Level(3)/Cogent are playing a pain game here, its 'no effort' not 'best effort'
Various people have stated that uneven data flows (e.g. from mostly-content networks to mostly-eyeball networks) is a good reason to not peer. I'd love to know how it improves Level 3's network to have data from Cogent arrive over some *other* connection rather than directly from a peering connection. Do
perhaps the other connection is already carrying significant outbound so this extra inbound is a small net cost, that would support L3's argument
So why break off peering???
this is about politics not engineering, dont try to confuse them. peering often is.
AFAICT there's only one reason to break off peering, and it's to force Cogent to pay (anyone) to transit the data. Why does L3 care if Cogent sends the data for free via peering, or pays someone ELSE to transit the data?
the economics are different for cogent, cogent loses some marketing advantage.. i can think of other reasons
I think this is about a big bully trying to force a smaller player off of the big guys' playing field (tier 1 peering). From where I sit it
cogent isnt a small player, they are a real threat to L(3).. dont feel sorry for them, they're not being bullied!
looks like an anti-competitive move that is not a "best effort" to serve their customers but a specific effort to put another (smaller) competitor out of business (of being a transit-free or mostly transit-free backbone) by forcing them to pay (someone), forcing their
really? you mean one company wants to take business from the other company? thats amazing.. and i thought ISPs existed together in harmony never looking at each others customer bases
IMHO all L3 customers have a valid argument that Level 3 is in default of any service contract that calls for "best effort" or similar on L3's part.
can you cite the relevant clause in your Level3 contract that brings you to this conclusion.. hint: you might be looking a long time because it doesnt exist and they're not in breach
I also believe that Cogent has a valid argument that Level 3's behavior is anti-competitive in a market where the tier 1 networks *collectively* have a 100% complete monopoly on the business of offering transit-free backbone internet services. As such, L3's behavior might fall into anti-trust territory - because if Cogent caves in over this and buys transit for the traffic destined for L3 then what's to stop the rest of the tier 1 guys from following suit and forcing Cogent to buy transit to get to *all* tier 1 networks? Then who will they (TINT) force out next?
these are big companies, they can fight their own battles. there is no tier-1 monopoly. in many cases its cheaper to send data via transit than peering so why do you care about transit-free anyway?
What's to stop a big government (like the US) from stepping in and attempting to regulate peering agreements, using the argument that internet access is too important to allow individual networks to bully other networks out of the market - at the expense of customers - and ultimately resulting in less competition and higher rates? Is this type of regulation good for the internet? OTOH is market consolidation good for the internet?
they're not acting illegally or as a monopoly, and theres no anti-trust so theres no reason to expect any government interventions. Steve
Stephen J. Wilcox wrote:
On Thu, 6 Oct 2005, JC Dill wrote:
IMHO all L3 customers have a valid argument that Level 3 is in default of any service contract that calls for "best effort" or similar on L3's part.
can you cite the relevant clause in your Level3 contract that brings you to this conclusion.. hint: you might be looking a long time because it doesnt exist and they're not in breach
Rather than speculation, it would be helpful to refer to the actual contracts. Please post the relevant sections, Mr Wilcox. I don't have a L(3) contract. Merit seems to have one with Cogent (and mine is with Merit), but I don't have ready access to that one, either. We'll need to see the contractual language before embarking on a concerted effort. -- William Allen Simpson Key fingerprint = 17 40 5E 67 15 6F 31 26 DD 0D B9 9B 6A 15 2C 32
On Fri, 7 Oct 2005, William Allen Simpson wrote:
Stephen J. Wilcox wrote:
On Thu, 6 Oct 2005, JC Dill wrote:
IMHO all L3 customers have a valid argument that Level 3 is in default of any service contract that calls for "best effort" or similar on L3's part.
can you cite the relevant clause in your Level3 contract that brings you to this conclusion.. hint: you might be looking a long time because it doesnt exist and they're not in breach
Rather than speculation, it would be helpful to refer to the actual contracts. Please post the relevant sections, Mr Wilcox.
the contract talks of on-net traffic, off-net traffic and excused outages excused outages includes that of third party network providers off-net traffic has a 99% SLA excluding excused outages. Steve
Rather than speculation, it would be helpful to refer to the actual contracts. Please post the relevant sections, Mr Wilcox.
the contract talks of on-net traffic, off-net traffic and excused outages
excused outages includes that of third party network providers
off-net traffic has a 99% SLA excluding excused outages.
One interesting point that came up in an off-list message that I received was the topic of arbitration. Would anyone be in a position to estimate how many peering agreements include an arbitration clause such as this one: http://www.cidra.org/modelarb.htm I have no relationship with CIDRA, but since they are in Chicago, a major trading center, and they offer international arbitration, I thought they were an appropriate example. In the non-Internet world of telecommunications, the state PUCs handle arbitration of interconnect disputes but that is because this role is embedded in the Telecommunications Act of 1966. Other arbitration services include http://www.adr.org who are tied in to the NAFTA agreements, http://www.cpradr.org/ http://www.usam.com/ http://www.acrnet.org/ Here is a quick summary of US arbitration law http://www.arbitration.co.nz/content.asp?section=Arbitration&country=USA Seems to me that the ideal here would be for the industry to agree on a dispute resolution mechanism and for all bilateral peering agreements to include the same arbitration clause. For this kind of arbitration to function well, the arbitrators need to have some understanding of the industry and the technology. This can only be accomplished by selecting one arbitration organization to handle all the arbitration duties for the whole industry. Airing dirty landry in public like this hurts the whole industry, not just Level 3 and Cogent in particular. The solution is to use binding arbitration clauses in all interconnect agreements whether settlement-free, paid peering or settlement-based. --Michael Dillon
On Fri, 7 Oct 2005, Michael.Dillon@btradianz.com wrote:
Seems to me that the ideal here would be for the industry to agree on a dispute resolution mechanism and for all bilateral peering agreements to include the same arbitration clause. For this kind of arbitration to function well, the arbitrators need to have some understanding of the industry and the technology. This can only be accomplished by selecting one arbitration organization to handle all the arbitration duties for the whole industry.
the trouble is that there is no regulatory requirement of peering, there is no accepted standard for peering, the definition of fair varies greatly and the policies that exist are based on many criteria and personalities the problem that would arise as i see it is that such an arbitrator would be consistent with its decisions but that would be consistently right for one player and consistently wrong for another.. and if we apply that to the current scenario we can see arguments for both cogent and level3s positions
Airing dirty landry in public like this hurts the whole industry, not just Level 3 and Cogent in particular. The solution is to use binding arbitration clauses in all interconnect agreements whether settlement-free, paid peering or settlement-based.
i'm not sure the industry does get hurt, to us this is a major incident, but in reality there appears to only be a handful of affected customers and its not getting much attention from the press someone implied this might work in the favour of non-tier-1 networks so if that were true that would be a benefit to such networks! Steve
Stephen J. Wilcox wrote:
On Fri, 7 Oct 2005, William Allen Simpson wrote:
Rather than speculation, it would be helpful to refer to the actual contracts. Please post the relevant sections, Mr Wilcox.
the contract talks of on-net traffic, off-net traffic and excused outages
excused outages includes that of third party network providers
off-net traffic has a 99% SLA excluding excused outages.
Again, rather than speculation, it would be helpful to refer to the actual contracts. Please post the relevant sections, not your summary of an index of definitions, Mr Wilcox. For instance, I rather doubt that the contract language defines a decision of L(3) to terminate connectivity to a third party as an "excused outage". But we won't know without the contract. Enlighten us. -- William Allen Simpson Key fingerprint = 17 40 5E 67 15 6F 31 26 DD 0D B9 9B 6A 15 2C 32
On Fri, 7 Oct 2005, William Allen Simpson wrote:
Stephen J. Wilcox wrote:
On Fri, 7 Oct 2005, William Allen Simpson wrote:
Rather than speculation, it would be helpful to refer to the actual contracts. Please post the relevant sections, Mr Wilcox.
the contract talks of on-net traffic, off-net traffic and excused outages
excused outages includes that of third party network providers
off-net traffic has a 99% SLA excluding excused outages.
Again, rather than speculation, it would be helpful to refer to the actual contracts. Please post the relevant sections, not your summary of an index of definitions, Mr Wilcox.
that was it, i just shortened it
For instance, I rather doubt that the contract language defines a decision of L(3) to terminate connectivity to a third party as an "excused outage". But we won't know without the contract.
Enlighten us.
"excused outages ... includes ... third party network providers" it doesnt go anywhere talking about peerings or specifics of the connectivity, but it seems to me that the ability to pass traffic to cogent falls right in this get out clause as it is a third party ianal but i'd push to break contract rather than sue Level3 as the latter seems to be a very big gamble Steve
On Thu, 06 Oct 2005 22:54:37 PDT, JC Dill said:
I also believe that Cogent has a valid argument that Level 3's behavior is anti-competitive in a market where the tier 1 networks *collectively* have a 100% complete monopoly on the business of offering transit-free backbone internet services. As such, L3's behavior might fall into anti-trust territory
Please enumerate the tier 1 networks who comprise this collective monopoly. Seriously. Somehow, although civil lawsuits do occasionally name John Does when the actual name is expected to be revealed during pre-trial discovery (usually when the action is known, but the person isn't, as in "John Doe, the upper manager in Sales who authorized the tortable activity"), I don't see much hope for a lawsuit claiming abuse of a monopoly when you can't name who is a member up front....
Various people have stated that uneven data flows (e.g. from mostly-content networks to mostly-eyeball networks) is a good reason to not peer.
I think the industry simply needs to accept that it's more expensive to receive traffic than to send it. So yes, Cogent sends Level 3 more traffic than Level 3 sends them. But that's because Level 3's customers want to receive a lot of traffic, and it's just a fact about the Internet that it's expensive to receive traffic. Sorry. Bill your customers or design your business model appropriately. If I want to send you a packet and you want to receive that packet, I should expect to pay the costs of sending the packet to you and you should expect to pay the cost of receiving the packet from me. If one costs more than the other, well, that's the breaks. The benefit isn't always equal, why should the costs be? The question is whether the benefit to each side exceeds their cost. Yes, that can't possibly work. It's way too simple and actually makes sense. DS
On Oct 8, 2005, at 7:02 AM, David Schwartz wrote:
Various people have stated that uneven data flows (e.g. from mostly-content networks to mostly-eyeball networks) is a good reason to not peer.
I think the industry simply needs to accept that it's more expensive to receive traffic than to send it.
But it is not. It is more expensive to carry a large packet a long way than to carry a small packet a long way. Because of things like hot-potato routing, that frequently means the sender has less cost than the receiver, depending on where they meet. The rest of your argument is based on the premise that none of this is changeable. Which is clearly wrong. "Receivers" have been de-peering "Senders" for over half a decade. (I.e. "Forever" in Internet time.) These fights have been fixed by things like sending MEDs or intentionally recruiting customers to balance traffic for a long, long time. Of course, there is nothing wrong with an eyeball network saying "I'll carry it, gimme gimme!" But that doesn't mean they have to.
Yes, that can't possibly work. It's way too simple and actually makes sense.
No, it can't work because you assume things which are not necessarily factual. Not to mention, it doesn't make sense. -- TTFN, patrick
davids@webmaster.com ("David Schwartz") writes:
I think the industry simply needs to accept that it's more expensive to receive traffic than to send it.
It is? For everybody? For always? That's a BIG statement. Can you justify?
... The question is whether the benefit to each side exceeds their cost.
Yea, verily. But I don't think you'll find a one-cost-fits-all model. When one person's costs are lower than another and they're doing similar things, it's often called "efficiency" or "competitiveness". (Just as one example.) -- Paul Vixie
davids@webmaster.com ("David Schwartz") writes:
I think the industry simply needs to accept that it's more expensive to receive traffic than to send it.
It is? For everybody? For always? That's a BIG statement. Can you justify?
In those cases where it in fact is and there's nothing you can do about it, you need to accept it. You should not expect to be able to shift the burden of carrying your customers' traffic on your network to others. (The fact that you can sometimes bully or blackmail and get away with it doesn't justify it.)
... The question is whether the benefit to each side exceeds their cost.
Yea, verily. But I don't think you'll find a one-cost-fits-all model. When one person's costs are lower than another and they're doing similar things, it's often called "efficiency" or "competitiveness". (Just as one example.)
I heartily agree. My point is simply that the "your customers are getting more out of our network that our customers are" argument is bull. Your customers are paying you to carry their traffic over your network. There can certainly be legitimate peering disputes about where to peer and whether there are enough peering points. If someone wants you to peer with them at just one place, it would certainly be more cost-effective for you to reach them through a transit provider you meet in multiple places, for example. (You could definitely refuse settlement-free peering if it actually increases your costs to reach the peer.) I am not making the pie-in-the-sky argument that everyone should peer with everyone else. I am specifically rejecting the argument that a traffic direction imbalance is grounds for rejecting settlement-free peering. If your customers want to receive traffic and receiving is more expensive, then that's what they're paying you for. Again, carrying *your* customers' traffic over *your* network is what *your* customers are paying *you* for. If your customers want more expensive traffic, you should bear that greater burden. A traffic direction imbalance is not reasonable grounds for rejecting SFI. The direction your customers want their traffic to go is more valuable and it's okay if it costs more. DS
Peering Ratios? It is very timely that the upcoming NANOG Peering BOF X in Los Angeles will have a debate on this very subject: Traffic Ratios - a valid settlement metric or dinosaur from the dot.bomb past. I'm sure the strongest arguments from these threads will be clearly articulated (in a bullet point/summarized form I hope) during the debate by the debaters. At the end of the day, as with most things peering, the focus of this discussion is a meld of business and technical interests. The heat we have witnessed is probably more related to the friction of the business interests. We get very upset about the notion of "fair" don't we. Perhaps in the few structured minutes of the Peering BOF debate we can objectively hear both sides of this argument and provide a little light as well. Defending Traffic Ratios as a valid peering prereq: Peter Cohen Attacking Traffic Ratios as peering prereq: Richard Steenbergen Should be good fun. Bill On 10/10/05, David Schwartz <davids@webmaster.com> wrote:
davids@webmaster.com ("David Schwartz") writes:
I think the industry simply needs to accept that it's more expensive to receive traffic than to send it.
It is? For everybody? For always? That's a BIG statement. Can you justify?
In those cases where it in fact is and there's nothing you can do about it, you need to accept it. You should not expect to be able to shift the burden of carrying your customers' traffic on your network to others. (The fact that you can sometimes bully or blackmail and get away with it doesn't justify it.)
... The question is whether the benefit to each side exceeds their cost.
Yea, verily. But I don't think you'll find a one-cost-fits-all model. When one person's costs are lower than another and they're doing similar things, it's often called "efficiency" or "competitiveness". (Just as one example.)
I heartily agree.
My point is simply that the "your customers are getting more out of our network that our customers are" argument is bull. Your customers are paying you to carry their traffic over your network.
There can certainly be legitimate peering disputes about where to peer and whether there are enough peering points. If someone wants you to peer with them at just one place, it would certainly be more cost-effective for you to reach them through a transit provider you meet in multiple places, for example. (You could definitely refuse settlement-free peering if it actually increases your costs to reach the peer.)
I am not making the pie-in-the-sky argument that everyone should peer with everyone else. I am specifically rejecting the argument that a traffic direction imbalance is grounds for rejecting settlement-free peering. If your customers want to receive traffic and receiving is more expensive, then that's what they're paying you for.
Again, carrying *your* customers' traffic over *your* network is what *your* customers are paying *you* for. If your customers want more expensive traffic, you should bear that greater burden.
A traffic direction imbalance is not reasonable grounds for rejecting SFI. The direction your customers want their traffic to go is more valuable and it's okay if it costs more.
DS
-- //------------------------------------------------ // William B. Norton <wbn@equinix.com> // Co-Founder and Chief Technical Liaison, Equinix // GSM Mobile: 650-315-8635 // Skype, Y!IM: williambnorton
davids@webmaster.com ("David Schwartz") writes:
My point is simply that the "your customers are getting more out of our network that our customers are" argument is bull. Your customers are paying you to carry their traffic over your network.
whenever you think you have a reasonable design, you can concept-test it for the internet by asking, "what if six million people did this?" i suspect that absent peering requirements, there would be a lot of WAN ISO-L2 and on-net ISO-L3 sold, a lot more ASN's on the hoof, and a bit less stability in the BGP core. since most of the transit ISO-L3 providers are also in the on-net ISO-L3 or WAN ISO-L2 (or both) business, the end result would be the same people getting paid the same amounts by the same other people, but called something else than what we call it now. maybe this would be better than "my network is bigger!", "no it ain't!", etc? -- Paul Vixie
On 6-Oct-2005, at 19:38, Schliesser, Benson wrote:
Customers don't want to pay for a "stochastic set of relationships", they will pay for the "Internet" however.
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.
It's like paying for a telephone that could only call a subset of the world's telephone users.
... which is precisely what every telephone service you can buy in the world gives you, to varying degrees. 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? Joe
participants (15)
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Alex Rubenstein -
David Schwartz -
Jay Adelson -
JC Dill -
Joe Abley -
Michael.Dillon＠btradianz.com -
Mikael Abrahamsson -
Patrick W. Gilmore -
Paul Vixie -
Richard A Steenbergen -
Schliesser, Benson -
Stephen J. Wilcox -
Valdis.Kletnieks＠vt.edu -
William Allen Simpson -
William B. Norton