[141300] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Why don't ISPs peer with everyone?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Robert F Maxwell)
Tue Jun 7 10:44:37 2011
From: Robert F Maxwell <rmaxwell@umd.edu>
To: Jon Lewis <jlewis@lewis.org>
Date: Tue, 7 Jun 2011 10:44:53 -0400
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.61.1106070914260.4318@soloth.lewis.org>
Cc: "bmanning@vacation.karoshi.com" <bmanning@vacation.karoshi.com>,
"nanog@nanog.org" <nanog@nanog.org>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
I'd like to foster a discussion here to better understand this, not rile an=
yone up. That said, what I see so far is a representation of those who do =
not recall the halcyon days before a rabid profit motive was the driving fo=
rce behind ISPs.=20
Peering in it's original sense is/was free. It was a swap of traffic. That =
profit motive has created the phrase "settlement free peering" to refer to =
the original definition so it seems like the free swap of traffic is the ab=
erration. The big ISPs used to seek to balance content hosting and the cust=
omer load to avoid having to pay for any sort of transit. AOL was known to =
acquire companies which had huge downstream traffic for this purpose.=20
Now we see ISPs waging an economic war with content providers wanting to fi=
nd a way to charge, say, Google for allowing them to to pass their YouTube =
content along to the ISP's subscribers. This is the result of letting non-t=
echnical, profit-driven managers run the show and not the usually eager to =
cooperate network engineers who actually understand how this stuff works.=20
The problem here is that the closer you are to the end user, the harder you=
're getting screwed, and not in a good way. The very large ISPs are doing r=
eal peering, and charging smaller, end-user focused ISPs high transit rates=
so that they can't possibly compete on price with the inferior, customer-s=
ervice-impaired ISP end-user offerings. The US government has declined to e=
nforce any sort of rule which might require the huge ISPs to grant wholesal=
e-type access to their physical networks (for better or worse depending on =
your POV) or examine any of this cartel-type behavior under the light of mo=
nopoly rules.=20
So please, short of socialism, and in light of the rampant legislation-for-=
sale culture in our government (how many FCC commissioners get jobs with hu=
ge ISPs?) how do we fix this?
Please note: I'm not advocating socialism. I might advocate regulation a la=
public utilities. There is universal agreement that the internet is "criti=
cal infrastructure." deregulating other utilities hasn't been uniformly suc=
cessful, especially when measured from the consumers' point of view. Though=
ts?
Rob
Sent from my iPad, so I can't have a fun sig.
On Jun 7, 2011, at 10:00 AM, "Jon Lewis" <jlewis@lewis.org> wrote:
> On Tue, 7 Jun 2011 bmanning@vacation.karoshi.com wrote:
>=20
>> in this context, anyone who is a BGP speaker is an ISP.
>=20
> Peering costs money. The transit bandwidth saved by peering with another=
=20
> network may not be sufficient to cover the cost of installing and=20
> maintaining whatever connections are necessary to peer. Then there's the=
=20
> big networks who really don't want to peer with anyone other than=20
> similarly sized big networks...everyone else should be their transit=20
> customer.
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> I manage a network that's primarily a hosting network. There's a similar=
=20
> hosting network at the other end of the building. We both have multiple=
=20
> gigs of transit. We don't peer with each other. Perhaps we should,=20
> because the cost of the connection would be negligible (I think we alread=
y=20
> have multiple fiber pairs between our suites), but looking at my sampled=
=20
> netflow data, I'm guessing we average about 100kbit/s or less traffic in=
=20
> each direction between us. At that low a level, is it even worth the tim=
e=20
> and trouble to coordinate setting up a peering connection, much less=20
> tying up a gigE port at each end?
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> Anyone from hostdime reading this? :)
> If so, what are your thoughts?
>=20
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Jon Lewis, MCP :) | I route
> Senior Network Engineer | therefore you are
> Atlantic Net |
> _________ http://www.lewis.org/~jlewis/pgp for PGP public key_________
>=20
