From: Matthew E. Pearson <mpearson@games-online.com> To: nanog@merit.edu Subject: Re: UUNET Pulling Peering Agreements & replacing them withcharging under non-disclosure? Date: Friday, May 02, 1997 9:54 PM

At 10:46 PM 5/1/97 -0400, Gordon Cook wrote:

...

I have just had a phone call from a particpant in the news conference of the well. What UUNET is doing to many of its peers, including the Well, is now clear. According to my caller, Dave Hughes, it has served notice to many if not most of its peers that, in late May and early June, it will either terminate their peering session or that the peers will have to start paying for the privilege. How much will be charged and under what conditions is unknown. Why? Because the unfortunate peers either have to **sign non disclosure agreements before** they even sit down with UUNET or simply be cut off.

Now how pathetic is this? UUNET one of the original pioneers of the Commercial Internet, one of the Flagships of open systems, standards, and connectivity now wants to extort money from other networks for peering? As if they don't make enough money. Gee wouldn't it really suck for all of UUNet's customers and MSN etc if a company like ConXion no longer had UUNET peering? Gee they couldn't download any Microsoft products anymore! True, UUNET is big, true they have many good sites and on-line resources for customers. But, they are not so good that they deserve some mega-high

I'm picturing a kind of "UUNET Disconnects from Internet" type of headline. This NDA thing has got me shut down. John Sidgemore won't talk to me. Ok, let's go public. What do you guys know? As usual in Boardwatch, we'll all pretend I had a dream last night and made it all up. I don't know what I'm talking about, yata yata yata.... e-mail privately. I hallucinated it as always... Jack Rickard Jack Rickard 8500 West Bowles Ave, Ste 210 Editor/Publisher Littleton, CO 80123 Boardwatch Magazine (303)973-6038 voice http://www.boardwatch.com (303)973-3731 fax ---------- price

for the honor of accessing their customers. After all, why do you need a confidentiality agreement if your prices are reasonable? Put a gag-order on people from complaining about pricing...

This is also practically extortion. "Yes, we are peers, we have already decided that our customers and yours would benefit, but YOU and YOUR customers should pay to access ours...." Maybe everyone should pull out of peering with UUNET and tell them they need to pay US to peer. Just my $0.02

I am all for a commercial Internet, but this takes it WAY to far for my tastes. At least true telecom carriers are regulated in what they can charge for interconnects by the FCC or another governmental body in their own country. Sheesh..

Send all flames to: dev@null.com

------------------------------------------------- Matthew E. Pearson Vice President of Development Games-Online Inc. http://www.games-online.com