[109072] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Sprint v. Cogent, some clarity & facts
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Lamar Owen)
Tue Nov 4 14:39:57 2008
Date: Tue, 4 Nov 2008 14:39:15 -0500
From: Lamar Owen <lowen@pari.edu>
To: nanog@nanog.org
In-Reply-To: <8EB0179B-DB38-479D-9C40-962758C0C2D0@ianai.net>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces@nanog.org
On Tuesday 04 November 2008 11:55:01 Patrick W. Gilmore wrote:
> On Nov 4, 2008, at 11:51 AM, Tomas L. Byrnes wrote:
> > The concept of "Transit Free" is a political failure, not a technical
> > one.
> We disagree.
[snip]
> So I guess you could say the current situation is a political success.
I would say a 'qualified' political success. Like most other political
solutions to technical problems, the concept of transit-free (and even the
differentiation between transit and settlement-free peering) is a best-effort
compromise, and works pretty well under most circumstances.
But, which is worse: a completely 100% reachable Internet* with massive
transit congestion that is massively expensive or the current partitionable
Internet* that actually works and is affordable?
Note: * There is no such thing as a 100% reachable 'Internet,' just a tangled
lattice of interconnections of autonomous systems who provide best-effort
interconnections. To what extent there IS an 'Internet' changes every
second.
