[141304] in North American Network Operators' Group
RE: Why don't ISPs peer with everyone?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Rettke, Brian)
Tue Jun 7 12:09:13 2011
From: "Rettke, Brian" <Brian.Rettke@cableone.biz>
To: "nanog@nanog.org" <nanog@nanog.org>
Date: Tue, 7 Jun 2011 09:08:57 -0700
In-Reply-To: <57C0613A-CCAF-4662-A1C6-FF286B3D6B56@umd.edu>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
Content providers (e.g. Netflix, Hulu, YouTube) will always try to get thei=
r content serviced for little to no cost. The low cost, web-only plan isn't=
sustainable, and the amount of Netflix traffic around the globe is a good =
example; There's a lot of traffic that they aren't paying for. The free ma=
rket only works if entities self-police. But as has been expertly stated, t=
here's no money in that.
I had an idea, I'm sure it's been said before:
If we actually had solid "Tier 1 vs Tier 2 vs Tier 3" thresholds, and we co=
uld come up with an agreeable metric, we might be able to minimize the impa=
ct of bandwidth hogs (sorry Netflix, pointing at you).
So, if you are a Tier 1, you are required to have at least 10 piers in 10 l=
ocations, 5 of which must be Tier 1 providers. If you are Tier 2, that numb=
er is halved. It could be a combination of having the "status" of being a T=
ier 1 provider, but the major benefit is a reduction of the diameter of the=
Internet. Even done by continent, this could offer enough parallel paths t=
o help address (potentially) the cost of doing business.
I think we would need to have something similar for content providers. To r=
each Tier 1 status, you are required to have 10 piers in 10 locations, whic=
h should cover a set multiple of your total bandwidth (1 TB if it is 500 GB=
, etc....) For reaching different tiers, they could receive a price break o=
n the cost of Internet circuits.
There would also need to be a middle ground somewhere. Circuits would eithe=
r need to stop being unlimited or have service thresholds. For exceeding, t=
he content provider would be liable to pay X amount per Gigabit of bandwidt=
h. This would then force Content providers to scale their business rather t=
han relying on the upstream providers' upstream provider to do so.
Not perfect by a great margin, but I think something like that could help.
Sincerely,
Brian A . Rettke
-----Original Message-----
From: Robert F Maxwell [mailto:rmaxwell@umd.edu]
Sent: Tuesday, June 07, 2011 7:45 AM
To: Jon Lewis
Cc: bmanning@vacation.karoshi.com; nanog@nanog.org
Subject: Re: Why don't ISPs peer with everyone?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
>
>> in this context, anyone who is a BGP speaker is an ISP.
>
> Peering costs money. The transit bandwidth saved by peering with another
> network may not be sufficient to cover the cost of installing and
> maintaining whatever connections are necessary to peer. Then there's the
> big networks who really don't want to peer with anyone other than
> similarly sized big networks...everyone else should be their transit
> customer.
>
> I manage a network that's primarily a hosting network. There's a similar
> hosting network at the other end of the building. We both have multiple
> gigs of transit. We don't peer with each other. Perhaps we should,
> because the cost of the connection would be negligible (I think we alread=
y
> have multiple fiber pairs between our suites), but looking at my sampled
> netflow data, I'm guessing we average about 100kbit/s or less traffic in
> each direction between us. At that low a level, is it even worth the tim=
e
> and trouble to coordinate setting up a peering connection, much less
> tying up a gigE port at each end?
>
> Anyone from hostdime reading this? :)
> If so, what are your thoughts?
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Jon Lewis, MCP :) | I route
> Senior Network Engineer | therefore you are
> Atlantic Net |
> _________ http://www.lewis.org/~jlewis/pgp for PGP public key_________
>
