IMHO, you have to have 'best blend' of direct peering at peering points as also having dual homing to upstream - ofcourse depending on size. 1.it help keeping resiliency and 2.provide optimal route to your customer - No matter how much fine-tuning you do in attempt to provide optimal path to your customer, in absence of direct peering, some of your customer have to bounce back accross atlantic to reach to network within their own country - not a good 'economics' for your customer and so to you. Also where there is metered base charging by your upstream provider, you end-up paying less to the extent traffic is carried by your peers and vic-e-versa or 3. go for private peerign connection. No congestion :O) The cost of peering has to be viewed from the perspective of complementary to each other and resiliency point of view rather than in absolute 'economics' term. As for congestion, you can't miss it- no matter which alone option you opt ;O) Best Regards Hitesh Patel -----Original Message----- From: brandon@rd.bbc.co.uk [mailto:brandon@rd.bbc.co.uk] Sent: 30 November 2001 17:48 To: nanog@merit.edu Subject: Re: a question about the economics of peering

where if you peer with the network that has the congestion and there is no money changing hands there is not a lot of incentive for them to fix it just for you.

I don't see how paying someone to transit to their congested peers network is better than just peering with the congested network yourself. brandon