At 09:52 AM 1/27/97 -0800, you wrote:

...

[...] say your MCI and you have a smaller provider that wants to peer with you, you had rather have them buy a pipe than let the peer and ride your network for free. It's all about market share, plain and simple.

That's the conventional thinking. (I won't say "conventional wisdom" since this is not a wise practice.) The trouble with this is called the Sherman Act, which has a provision for something like "collusion in restraint of trade." I'm not pointing at MCI -- I have no idea whether they have ever thought as you ascribed above. But in your example, MCI does not know who the nonpeer will ultimately buy transit from -- all it knows is that if MCI refuses to peer, the nonpeer will have to buy transit from someone who *does* peer with MCI. If reasonable suspicion can be raised that this is occurring, then everybody in the "first tier" peering club can be investigated by the feds.

This isn't a "big" deal, Microsoft has been investigated by the feds and they're still in business. In fact, it didn't even hurt their reputation, let alone their bottom line. When the big nets started demanding private peering and refusing to peer with little guys, I had to just shrug and think, "well, they are now big enough that they do not fear gov't intervention."

While I agree with 99.999% of what Paul is saying, I'd like to point out that whether or not the Government presses a case (and utimately wins or loses it) against a giant corporation has little to do with the actual infractions involved. Ultimately what matters is a complex web of ego, the desire to make money, and politics. The fact that a group of major carriers are doing such-and-such won't cause the DoJ to investigate. The fact that it totally pisses off one or more of the correct people will. Once that happens, the fate the companies involved is based on such a complicated interplay of the components of the forementioned web, it is impossible to predict ahead of time what the ultimate outcome will be. --zawada Paul J. Zawada, RCDD | Senior Network Engineer zawada@ncsa.uiuc.edu | National Center for Supercomputing Applications +1 217 244 4728 | http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/People/zawada