Large access oriented companies like BBN, MCI and others have been keen to point out the problem with the so called web-farms. In the early days it clearly was a problem because the costs associated with carrying bandwidth were not evenly matched between a large distributed (and costly) access network and a MAE attached data center. It created an economic disparity that could not be sustained. Let's recognize the validity of that argument. Many of us (in the Brokered Private Peering initiative) have been looking for ways to solve that disparity and to create a fair value proposition between both types of networks. The best mechanism we have found is for the web-centric companies to have regionally distributed connect points and substantial backbone capacity to perform best-ingress or cold potato (from web to access point of view) routing. In our view, this model reverses the negative value proposition into highly favorable terms for the access company. After all, their customers want access to these Web sites and the service is now dropped off regionally, saving considerable backbone expense for the access company. That Exodus is doing cold potato and BBN does not find this sufficient to consider Exodus a true peer causes me some concern. It makes one wonder if there is a solution to this peering problem after all. I don't want to see the government intercede without at least trying to find peering balance. I believe Exodus has shown great willingness to "do the right thing here." This can develop into a backbone civil war and I think BBN will not fair well if that occurs. (There are major web sites being cut off if this break in peering happens. Believe me, BBN customers will care a great deal.) I don't see the upside in this decision. I truly hope that cooler heads prevail, and soon, or major parts of the network may black out for many thousands of Internet users. This will cause major harm to the Internet market and the perception of any-to-any connectivity. This will likely demand government intervention. Not good. Mike Gaddis CTO Savvis Communications -----Original Message----- From: alex@nac.net [SMTP:alex@nac.net] Sent: Wednesday, August 12, 1998 4:39 PM To: Robert Bowman Cc: dg@root.com; michaels@sun.aracnet.com; asr@millburn.net; nanog@merit.edu; alex@nt.nac.net Subject: Re: BBN Peering issues On Wed, 12 Aug 1998, Robert Bowman wrote:

I've tried to stay away from posting here, but a small clarification...

Exodus is currently dealing with the asymmetry of traffic by assuming a large chunk of the burden by doing best-exit, at BBN's request, based upon BBN's MEDs. So let's not make it into the argument that the "evil" web hosters are just dumping recklessly via shortest-path out. Exodus has assumed the cost of all long haul delivery coast-to-coast of the data that BBN's users are requesting.

Heh, that makes it look even worse for BBN now and potentially in the future, depending on what Exodus chooses to do. It's amazing that they shot thierselves in the foot like this.