[4924] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Peering versus Transit
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Alan Hannan)
Wed Oct 2 12:15:59 1996
To: alexis@panix.com (Alexis Rosen)
Date: Wed, 2 Oct 1996 11:00:58 -0500 (CDT)
Cc: dorian@cic.net, barney@databus.com, nanog@merit.edu
In-Reply-To: <199610021001.GAA04995@panix.com> from "Alexis Rosen" at Oct 2, 96 06:01:00 am
From: alan@mindvision.com (Alan Hannan)
Reply-To: alan@mindvision.com (Alan Hannan)
Hi Alexis,
> It's a really bad decision. It saves the cost of hiring a real engineer, but
> who wants to see a repeat of MAE-East? IXPs need a real traffic cop, at the
> very least, to wreak havoc on people who play nasty link-layer games. (Yes,
> it's conceivable that everyone on the IXP could guard themselves, but this
> is highly inefficient both in dollars and hours spent.)
It would seem to me that you've two rather positive choices ->
Elect the Routing Arbiter (Hi Bill :-) to police the XPs, or
through capitalism force the XP operators to implement such a
service.
The former would be difficult as the're A/ overworked, and B/
officially powerless at the XPs (unless the XPs annoint them, which
is highly suspect). The latter would be difficult in light of a
Robert Heinlein quote:
" If you give the people the ability to vote themselves bread
and circuses, they will. "
The market is used to cheap/low quality. While physically the XPs
meet most quality levels (arguable), they haven't an interest in
layer 4 or above (just L8 and especially not L9).
Were the market to change (it might) we could have this. Or, one
could create another market. Several smallerish XPs (StLouiX)
comes to mind, have high quality peering standards built into
them. I believe the CIX has done a fairly good job at this in the
past.
But, it's my opinion that the only way to get MFS/PB/SL/AADS to
listen is with the pocketbook.
-alan
