Re: Buy tier 1 peering for only $15 million
On Wed, 19 April 2000, Jeff Barrows wrote:
...such relationships are not always 'transferrable,' and one should evaluate any existing contractual agreements regarding said relationships before making such assumptions.
And since those relationships are covered by NDA, you can't evaluate such existing contractual agreements, .... If you want to spread Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt; it isn't always clear companies actually complete the "transfer" of the peering agreements when they buy, merge, or spin-off different parts of themselves. I hate to be the one who has to figure out the status of a Worldcom, Cable&Wireless or Genuity agreement as they passed through several mergers, spin-offs, name changes, change of control, etc. I wonder what happens to all of Sprint's peering agreements if they are bought by Worldcom or spun-off as a separate company. It would be very amusing to watch the Sprint folks run around NANOG trying to get back the few peering agreements they had because the agreements terminated because the company was sold. After watching what happened with the InternetMCI spin-off, I wouldn't be surprised the DOJ is watching how "transfers" happen. Will Sprint still be a "tier 1" provider? Its amazing the net works at all. The reality is I think it would be very unusual if UUNET terminated Genuity's or Sprint's peering agreement just because the ownership changed. If UUNET wouldn't do it in the case of those cases, they would have a difficult time explaining to DOJ why they would terminated a different provider's peering agreement if its ownership changed. So even though Jeff's statement is technically true, I don't think it is very practical.
...such relationships are not always 'transferrable,' and one should evaluate any existing contractual agreements regarding said relationships before making such assumptions.
So even though Jeff's statement is technically true, I don't think it is very practical.
it is extremely practical. and when purchasing an asset, review of contracts is exceedingly prudent. and the confidentiality of those contracts is not an issue as the contract review is under nda. randy
On 20 Apr 2000, Sean Donelan wrote:
Its amazing the net works at all.
The reality is I think it would be very unusual if UUNET terminated Genuity's or Sprint's peering agreement just because the ownership changed. If UUNET wouldn't do it in the case of those cases, they would have a difficult time explaining to DOJ why they would terminated a different provider's peering agreement if its ownership changed.
In the Genuity (meaning Genuity->BBN->GTEi->Genuity) case, while it didn't appear that any peering arrangements were terminated, they did go "stale". Whether this is GTE's way of saving a few bucks or the other guy's, I can't say (hell who can, it's under NDA), but in the end customers suffer as the acquired companies' original peering links get saturated and stay that way for a year or longer. I'm assuming there must be some political crap going on behind the scenes, as when it got to a certain point it appears that Genuity/GTEi/BBN started buying transit from Sprint for AS3847. Why AS3847 wouldn't buy transit from AS1 is beyond me, but I'm guessing it's not an operational decision. The point being, if network A is acquired by network B, I can tell you from firsthand knowledge that A may never see the advantageous peering arrangements B has, and furthermore, A's peering may slowly rot and turn to crap. Charles
It would be very amusing to watch the Sprint folks run around NANOG trying to get back the few peering agreements they had because the agreements terminated because the company was sold. After watching what happened with the InternetMCI spin-off, I wouldn't be surprised the DOJ is watching how "transfers" happen. Will Sprint still be a "tier 1" provider?
Its amazing the net works at all.
The reality is I think it would be very unusual if UUNET terminated Genuity's or Sprint's peering agreement just because the ownership changed. If UUNET wouldn't do it in the case of those cases, they would have a difficult time explaining to DOJ why they would terminated a different provider's peering agreement if its ownership changed.
I don't think that would really be much of an issue in the case of wcom/uunet and sprint getting together. I'm betting that they already have most "notable" peers in common. And if not, chances are that UUNet would have some sprint does not. The only real issue is going to be instances where one has a peering arrangement with a network that the other is transiting. And that, of course, is a case by case issue. Its been my observation that in mergers/acquisitions/etc that most peering arrangements will transfer. Each gets evaluated by both the companies merging and the peers, of course, but I haven't witnessed a large amount of problems in that regard. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Wayne Bouchard [Immagine Your ] web@typo.org [Company Name Here] Network Engineer http://www.typo.org/~web/resume.html ----------------------------------------------------------------------
participants (4)
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Charles Sprickman -
Randy Bush -
Sean Donelan -
Wayne Bouchard