I suppose the issue comes down to whether one considers the CIX relationship to be one of transit provider or if it is considered an exchange point.

This is is the crux of the question I meant to be posing.

Again, this is a political issue, and should probably be worked out between the two providers involved (hopefully through operational people and not lawyers though ;).

It is also a technical issue, as there are technical reasons why consistent routing announcements are usually specified, whether the CIX is an exchange or a for-fee transit provider is partially a technical judgement, ... The two providers did, for the moment, work it out at the engineering level. But we agreed the issue was interesting and the answer not obvious. randy