I've recently had problems with 2 very large ISPs (I would estimate that each of these ISPs has %10+ of the total network we think of as the internet) that have some sort of direct peering arrangement, but the circuit is so slow that it adds about 1900 ms of latency. Neither of these ISPs seems particularly concerned by the fact that they can access the other's network minimally, if at all. (For some reason some applications running over TCP seem to timeout with 2 second delays...) So in order to maintain connectivity to both of these providers, one would need to buy transit from each. How does this figure into the future political and technical growth of the net? Wouldn't this type of apathy tend to push toward government involvement in this industry? If the largest networks start to become largely unreachable outside of their internal connections, wouldn't that force the governments of the world to become involved in order to keep the net as the global business/political/economical beast it has become? I mention no names as the specifics aren't necessarily relevant to this list, although those of you on inet-access have probably seen my rant by now.. :) Just my .02 cents. Tim ---------------------------------------------------- Timothy M. Wolfe | Why surf when you can Sail? tim@clipper.net | Join Oregon's Premier Sr. Network Engineer | Wireless Internet Provider! ClipperNet Corporation | http://www.clipper.net/ ----------------------------------------------------
tim@clipper.net said:
So in order to maintain connectivity to both of these providers, one would need to buy transit from each.
If the connectivity problem is merely on the peering link between both providers, simply by transit from a third party who has some clue instead. Then none of your traffic will traverse the congesting peering link. Clueful transit will ensure their peering works to the best of their ability. tim@clipper.net said:
Wouldn't this type of apathy tend to push toward government involvement in this industry?
Incompetence, lack of innovation, etc. etc. from large networks which have economies of scale and would otherwise dominate the market, is largely the reason which small companies survive, compete, grow and become large companies. This is true throughout the telco world. It's the free market. Once Sprint had no IP network to speak of. If you order the 5 largest IP networks by traffic profile, you may get some surprises. -- Alex Bligh GX Networks (formerly Xara Networks)
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Tim Wolfe