[171932] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Observations of an Internet Middleman (Level3) (was: RIP
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Blake Hudson)
Fri May 16 15:12:10 2014
X-Original-To: nanog@nanog.org
Date: Fri, 16 May 2014 14:11:56 -0500
From: Blake Hudson <blake@ispn.net>
To: NANOG <nanog@nanog.org>
In-Reply-To: <CAL9jLaaX1CPZVwwokcx1wFeW_zSWFx16SFydxSRq5vD-msDgXw@mail.gmail.com>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces@nanog.org
Christopher Morrow wrote the following on 5/16/2014 1:52 PM:
> On Fri, May 16, 2014 at 2:47 PM, Blake Hudson <blake@ispn.net> wrote:
>> in the context of this discussion I think it's silly for a residential ISP
>> to purport themselves to be a neutral carrier of traffic and expect peering
>> ratios to be symmetric
> is 'symmetric traffic ratios' even relevant though? Peering is about
> offsetting costs, right? it might not be important that the ratio be
> 1:1 or 2:1... or even 10:1, if it's going to cost you 20x to get the
> traffic over longer/transit/etc paths... or if you have to build into
> some horrific location(s) to access the content in question.
>
> Harping on symmetric ratios seems very 1990... and not particularly
> germaine to the conversation at hand.
I agree about the term being passe ...and that it never applied to ISPs
...and that peering is about cost reduction, reliability, and
performance. It seems to me that many CDNs or content providers want to
setup peering relationships and are willing to do so at a cost to them
in order to bypass "the internet middle men". But I mention traffic
ratios because some folks in this discussion seem to be using it as
justification for not peering. But hey, why peer at little or no cost if
they can instead hold out and possibly peer at a negative cost?
--Blake
