On Fri, 21 Aug 1998, Brian Wallingford wrote:

If you don't peer with or buy transit from GTEI, sit back, shut up, and watch and learn (seriously - WATCH and LEARN).

This is seriously good advice. A lot of people have compared this to the UUNet peering flap but the two incidents couldn't be more different. In UUNet's case you had John Sidgemore, an economist, attempting to throw his weight around and push towards a paid peering scenario with a cartel at the core, all of this based solely on an economics viewpoint. But with BBN, there is a network engineering problem at the core of the issue, that of assymmetric traffic patterns. And BBN realizes that this sort of assymmetry will become more and more common in the future and that the industry needs to find some sort of hybrid peering/settlement mechanism that will work for both parties in an asymmetric arrangement. They are looking at things like what kind of methodology can be used to measure the traffic, what constitutes free balanced peering, how to charge for regional transit on traffic that exceeds the limits of balanced peering, and similar difficult issues. I believe that the reason we are not hearing many details is that there are NDAs in place about the specifics of the Exodus, AboveNet and CRL peering contracts. But sooner or later those companies will come to some sort of agreement and BBN will explain the rationale behind their thinking. We may not totally agree with that rationale, but I think we can all see that establishing peering between two specialty providers has to be handled a bit differently than between two full-service providers. And if BBN's ideas can be refined and accepted by the industry, then we will be in a better position because there will be an established methodology and pricing structure for an ISP to transition from full transit to full peering. I know from my experience with Priori that a lot of peering negotiations happen like an old-boys club cartel and if you ain't a member of the club, you can't get in. We need to change this so that there is an open process by which anyone can transition to being a peer based on an open and accepted methodology and pricing structure. -- Michael Dillon - Internet & ISP Consulting Memra Communications Inc. - E-mail: michael@memra.com Check the website for my Internet World articles - http://www.memra.com