[4819] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Peering versus Transit
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bill Woodcock)
Sun Sep 29 22:14:47 1996
Date: Sun, 29 Sep 1996 19:11:16 -0700 (PDT)
From: Bill Woodcock <woody@zocalo.net>
To: nanog@merit.edu
> * _Stealing_ is when B uses A's resources without permission or
> agreement.
Okay, for the sake of perpetuating an argument which should be at
least a little more interesting to you, Randy, than you let on, let's
try reversing those labels...
A = Little ISP
B = Sprint or MCI
C = Other transit provider
B collects money from B's customers in exchange for giving them access
to resources on the Internet. Let's say that A, which uses C for
transit, sells a connection to, for instance, a library, with the
assumption that they're providing a connection which library patrons
will use to browse resources on the Internet. Instead, the library,
A's customer, puts up their card catalog and a popular reference web
site. B's customers all want to get to A and download big honking
gifs. The "legitimate" path for this would be through C, to whom A has
to pay money, but B does not.
So let's look at the proposed definition of "stealing" again:
> * _Stealing_ is when B uses A's resources without permission or
> agreement.
In this case, the resource is transit purchased by A from C, for the
use of A's customers. In this case, B is "stealing" A's transit
resource for the use of B's customers, without compensating A. C is a
hapless bystander who now has to carry a lot of unneccessary traffic
which could be flowing directly between A and B.
Please explain to me how this creates a better, faster, cheaper, more
reliable Internet.
-Bill
________________________________________________________________________________
bill woodcock woody@zocalo.net woody@applelink.apple.com user@host.domain.com
