[38487] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: And then there were two
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Sam Thomas)
Wed Jun 6 10:29:37 2001
Date: Wed, 6 Jun 2001 14:29:02 +0000
From: Sam Thomas <sthomas@lart.net>
To: Sean Donelan <sean@donelan.com>
Cc: nanog@merit.edu
Message-ID: <20010606142902.A15644@lart.net>
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In-Reply-To: <20010606001613.3924.cpmta@c004.sfo.cp.net>; from sean@donelan.com on Tue, Jun 05, 2001 at 05:16:13PM -0700
Errors-To: owner-nanog-outgoing@merit.edu
On Tue, Jun 05, 2001 at 05:16:13PM -0700, Sean Donelan wrote:
>
> If you accept the premise that "peer == equal" does that mean
> in the end there will be only two ISPs each with exactly 50%
> of the world's Internet because no one else will be an equal?
>
>
> I've never understood how the word "peer" mutated from its
> technical definition arising from its use in the BGP protocol
> to its use by marketing people.
>
> As far as I can tell, EGP (Exterior Gateway Protocol) originally
> used the term "neighbor." Berkeley used the berkelism "peer" in
> their software and RFC 911 documenting their experience, and the
> term stuck through EGP2, BGP1-4.
>
> If we still used the word "neighbor" would the phrase "Are you
> a neighbor?" have a different ring than "Are you a peer?" You
> can have lots of neighbors, even if you think you are superior
> to all of them.
there's the Mr. Rogers aspect of asking "won't you be my neighbor?"
the current state of the internet does bear a striking resemblance
to make-believe land, so this may be quite appropriate.
:-D
--
Sam Thomas
Geek Mercenary
