[11114] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
CIX v2.0
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Marc Horowitz)
Tue Mar 22 04:52:32 1994
To: com-priv@psi.com
Date: Mon, 21 Mar 94 21:58:06 EST
From: Marc Horowitz <marc@MIT.EDU>
Ok, Karl. Here's a straw man. Tear me apart :-)
It seems to me that as things stand now, there's a limit on the number
of customers who will go to ANS or Sprint for CIX transit. That limit
is those two NSP's T1 pipes into the CIX itself. If too many
providers are trying to share that link, it will become saturated.
Maybe that's already happening.
The resources necessary to engineer a network for full bandwidth
utilization are a function of the number and sizes of pipes into that
network.
So, why not have the CIX member cost be a function of the pipe size,
and allow a member to resell part of his pipe, with full routing
guarantees going to all those networks, as well as the direct CIX
members?
This has several advantages. First, small providers can band together
to get a direct CIX membership. Maybe $10k isn't much (and your
arguments for that seem sound [and sound loud :-]), but $2k is even
better.
Second, large bandwidth resellers can buy a larger pipe into the CIX
when they take on new customers. If Sprint wanted more bandwidth into
the CIX today, what would happen? Could they do it?
This scheme would probably drive up the cost of the CIX to its direct
members (going from 150+ members down to 7 with no apparent reduction
in expenditures will do that), but I think that's ok, since they could
make up the money on the other end. For example, the cost to Sprint
would increase, but MCS wouldn't be paying anything to CIX anymore.
Instead, you might pay Sprint the $10k for CIX routing. This could
even be an advantage. With Sprint getting the $10k per customer, they
could afford to put in a nice, big T3. If Sprint chooses to pocket
the money rather than investing in its infrastructure, then you could
take your money to the other companies who would presumably compete
with them.
This would also eliminate the questions of whether using socks, term,
etc. is "cheating". There's no way to cheat on the pipe size. When
the T1 is saturated, it's saturated.
Marc
