I guess one of the concerns it the definition of peer. The policies as I read bhem by cnw and uunet seem to be so overly restrictive that none of the newer carriers will meet them. I've litterllly, not from uunet and or cw but from other carriers received responses to peering requests "Well your to small to peer but we have great transit pricing in the areas you requested." This is after I offered to meet them at the three east, west, and central mae's, a coupee if diverse paix's, and Chicago. If the concern is economics than peering ss much as possible and in a less restrictive manner makes the most sense. The target here is to provide the best possible service to customers which certainly ocould be other carriers, but are most likely more other end users. If performance is better it will in many cases be an easier sell. More than a few times prospective customers were very concerned with peering and interconnection. But then again I was up against uunet in a play to get a customer and uunet promised this customer they could globally route and announce to its peers /30's or longer. :) I certainly couldn't make such claims. I'm mentioning this because it seems in all companies, not just uunet claims are maid but frequently not backed up by technical good sense. I guess its like most things there are many approaches and certainly not everyone will agree to each approach. I just can't see cases when not peering is better assuming the basic requirements are met to insure proper technical performance. On Thu, 9 May 2002, David Barak wrote:

On Thu, 9 May 2002, Scott Granados wrote:

...

The only thing I can say is I wish they would just publically acknowledge that fact. If uunet and cw don't wish to peer they should just not have a peering policy.

come now, UU and C&W both have a substantive number of peers. Their policies tend toward equating the routing concept of "peer" with the english-language concept of "peer" meaning "equal."

The whole argument is that settlement-free-interconnection is only worthwhile if both parties benefit more than they would lose if they did not interconnect.

The economics of this will tend to encourage smaller providers to be more liberal with peering agreements, and larger providers to be less liberal. Does this still seem unfair?

David Barak WorldCom

"Quis custodes ipsos custodiet?" - Juvenal