UUNet won't be able to "stare down" just a simple and small farm.com, but rather it will be forced to play chicken with hundreds of farm.coms. While farm.com's customers will complain, so too will an even greater number of UUNet's customers. UUNet's need for a solid reputation may be greater than farm.com's. Wayne Bouchard (web@primenet.com) writes:

Ultimately, I think farm.com would have to give in to keep customers from moving services to a "better connected" provider.

Earlier, Avi seperated the meaning of peering with and without transit. I found it suprising that the press release only mentioned peering and did not mention transit (though it did seem to talk about transport). Yes, so now I'm more confused. Can anyone point me to a document that might tutor me? Are the statements below roughly accurate in terms of what a UUNet might do? Peering with transit: Yes, I'll connect with you, and honor your (A) BGP announcements. And if you can't establish a route to your destination without me, I'll give you a route through my net. Peering w/o transit: Yes, I'll connect with you, and honor your (B) BGP announcements. But if you can't get to non UUNet-customer destinations on your own, it just ain't your day. No Peering : Nope, I don't care if you want to establish a route to my customer. I'm not going to waste my resources exchanging routes with you and so your customers are effectively blocked from my customers -- unless an intermediary is going to provide transit.