[86310] in North American Network Operators' Group

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Re: cogent+ Level(3) are ok now

daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Patrick W. Gilmore)
Tue Nov 1 14:16:49 2005

In-Reply-To: <524903AF-41E9-4717-A919-1BF18E92AE78@sackheads.org>
Cc: "Patrick W. Gilmore" <patrick@ianai.net>
From: "Patrick W. Gilmore" <patrick@ianai.net>
Date: Tue, 1 Nov 2005 14:16:06 -0500
To: nanog@merit.edu
Errors-To: owner-nanog@merit.edu


On Nov 1, 2005, at 11:46 AM, John Payne wrote:

> On Nov 1, 2005, at 9:40 AM, Patrick W. Gilmore wrote:
>
>> If your business model is to provide flat-rate access, it is not  
>> _my_ responsibility to ensure your customers do not use more  
>> access than your flat-rate can compensate you to deliver.
>
> That is something that has always confused me about ratio based  
> peering disputes.
> Surely it is the responsibility of the content-sucking network to  
> build and engineer to meet the demands of *their* customers (and  
> build the cost of doing that into the pricing model).   It appears  
> to me that the content heavy networks are going above and beyond to  
> work around the broken model that the content-suckers have.
>
> What am I missing?

That argument works in both directions.  I'm an eyeball network, I'll  
sit in my DLSAM and force all the content people to come to me.   
Isn't their responsibility to their customers to deliver bits to me?

Assume that both content and eyeballs are equally important.  (If you  
assume one is more important than the other, this all devolves into  
"the less important should pay, period", which is not going to  
happen.)  Why does the content network get to dump traffic instantly  
without paying for long haul, but the eyeballs have to carry it  
across the ocean / country / whatever?

You could argue that's The Way It Is.  Eyeball and Tier One networks  
appear to disagree.  Not sure they are wrong.

It seems reasonable (to me, at least) to ask that a "peer" share the  
cost of trading bits.  Cold-potato does not mean the content network  
has to deliver bits to every DSLAM in the country.  But asking the  
hosting provider with 10M ft^2 colos in SJC & IAD to carry some of  
that traffic to ORD, DFW, LAX, JFK, etc., seems like a fair compromise.

-- 
TTFN,
patrick

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