On the contrary, as a decent sized, (not huge, not big, but bigger than average, and with a domestic and international footprint), ISP, we would like to be able to get a connection to UUNet or the other major carriers simply to get to *their* networks and those that pay to connect to them. I can get to many of the smaller networks through peering relationships we maintain at NAPs and other avenues as well as transit agreements with two major carriers. We bring both alot of traffic to the table that would like to terminate on those carriers networks and connect to a large number of sites with content (the States of Florida & New York amongst them). I am willing to pay to connect to a major carrier, but I don't want to buy transit. No one I know of, save us, currently offers this. What I would like to do is to connect to, for example, Sprint *just to get to folks who buy from Sprint*, not to transit through them to get to a NAP someplace. Logically, this should be available (and we make such arrangements available) at a lower cost than transit. At the extreme low end, it is a no-cost relationship at exchange points called peering. You suggestion of settlements is not new, in fact, it was a great fear about 18 months ago or so. Perhaps this is it re-occurring in the cyclic nature of the Net. Should someone want to charge me by the packet, I would make that same arrangement with them. As a telephone company, we make those reciprocal agreements all the time (and make money at it). Most of the RBOCs, however, prefer a no fee interchange since the traffic is imbalanced and they are on the loosing end. Should settlements look to be the model, I would build my network differently, putting all inbound traffic on settlement based connections and outbound traffic on non-settlement connections. Easy to do. How can we combat this? By building better interconnectivity amongst ourselves. Local exchanges help to offload traffic that we would otherwise hand off to major NSPs. We are actively campaigning to build exchanges in any city we can for ISPs to exchange traffic, removing it from the NSP backbone. Bob

---------- From: James Saker[SMTP:jsaker@intellitek.com] Sent: Friday, May 02, 1997 4:09 PM To: 'nanog@merit.edu' Subject: UUNET settlement - A call to arms?

In reviewing the service literature from UUNET, I can find no reference to "partial Internet service," "not really the whole Internet, but rather what we could offer today based on our peering arrangements, which may vary from day to day, and we are under no obligation to tell our customers what we can and cannot offer," etc.. I can't find the web server on UUNET that provides bulletins about what networks are unavailable today, nor does there appear to be a major-domo list, so when my customers complain about not connecting to our network from anywhere in North America (through various ISPs), I can verify that their ISP hasn't paid UUNET for peering, etc..

I view such partial service as unacceptable from an NSP, especially when I can obtain full service from other NSPs for the same or less money. Unless I'm behind the times, MCI, BBN, PSI and others still have rather complete networks.