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From: Peter van Dijk [mailto:peter@dataloss.nl]

Unet is, for example, one of the few (if not the only) ISP in The Netherlands that charges for *peering* (no, not transit, just peering).

I suspect [but don't know, as I don't work for UUNET anymore] that you are confusing 'paid peering' with the transit product, when configured to exchange only a specific subset of the possible routes. The real difference is this: Do you get a different price /PER MB/ for getting only a subset of routes as opposed to getting full routes from them? If you are still unsure, just ask UUNET if they consider you a peer or a customer-- they'll tell you. Hint: If you send them money, you are a customer. Many, many, many, [a whole bunch of] customers of major networks pay full transit prices from upstream transit providers, and only elect to receive [or use] that upstream providers' customer routes. The smallest networks out there can configure their boxes to do this, and it doesn't mean that they are a paid peer of any given network. It just means that they are deciding where to send their traffic. I know some providers offer a lower-priced peering-routes-only product. I don't think such a UUNET product exists. Perhaps the sales person led you to believe that it was paid peering, or the person you heard this from didn't convey it to you correctly? (I don't mean to imply that UUNET sales folks would do this, just that most large sales teams tend to get a few folks that cloud product definitions from time to time.) It is good to see that various larger providers (i.e., Genuity's AS1 Express [paid-peering] product) are offering this service. I am curious as to how they feel it is affecting their revenue, as it has the potential to get a lot of customers to convert from full-price transit to a cheaper price for a subset of routes, or lead to a cannibalization of some of their largest customers. Presumably, one could limit the set of customers that qualified for such a product to some smaller subset that was of interest. It would seem more fitting for networks that are less-peered to offer such a product, as they can pass some savings on to customers that don't require them to pay for traffic to go off-net via their costly upstream transit links. For networks that are essentially fully peered, the economics of offering such a product aren't as clear to me. I am interested in hearing thoughts on this topic offline. - jsb P.S. Again, I don't work for UUNET, and don't intend to speak for them or discuss anything proprietary to UUNET.