[11171] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: ANS and the CIX - have they really connected? (fwd)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Simon Poole)
Wed Mar 23 20:08:38 1994
To: digex@ss1.digex.net (Doug Humphrey)
Date: Wed, 23 Mar 1994 14:15:46 +0100 (MET)
Cc: com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: <Pine.3.89.9403221504.A25388-0100000@ss1.digex.net> from "Doug Humphrey" at Mar 22, 94 03:49:31 pm
From: Simon Poole <poole@magnolia.eunet.ch>
>
> Maybe what is needed is to understand the INTENT of the CIX "no
> backdoor" policy. I have a funny feeling that this thing didn't
> start out as a "anyone with an IP address has obviously been
> resold to" issue, but more a "if you sell to a network of machines
> then the average utilization on yout flat fee connection is going
> o be much higher" issue, really designed to get discourage a T1
> being sold from really pushing T1 data rates, which it is
> much more likely to do if it is serving downstream providers...
I'm sorry, but the issues are getting more and more mixed up. In
particular the issue of no-resale rules of specific NSP's has nothing
or very little to do in my eyes with access to the CIX no-settlement
agreement and to the CIX exchange point.
I'll just try and restate my idea of the CIX purpose and goals to see
if me can stop this discussion going around in circles.
----------
The CIX (Commercial Internet Exchange) is an industry association
of -commercial- ISP's. The CIX members are competing with each other
for customers, but still see value in agreeing to terms and conditions
of membership in this association that allow a very low entry level to
newcomers and essentially negate most advantages of having a large
customer base, infrastructure etc..
Essentially to become a member a self-declaration that you are a
serious commercial ISP is enough (you do this by paying the member-
ship fee). However I can not see anything wrong or immoral in the
CIX members reserving membership to organisations that are in the
same business as them, namely providing -commercial- Internet
-service-.
-----------
Now there seem to be two complaints about the current CIX model:
1) that it is not attractive for what are essentially end-users
(customers) to connect to.
Obviously this was never the goal of the CIX and I would
assume that not many readers of this list can see anything
wrong with this. You could just as well request all ISP's
to provide free service to everybody.
2) that the CIX doesn't cater for ISP's that want to provide
transit for other ISP's that are not members.
Allowing this officially (instead of leaving this to private
agreement), would allow these third party ISP's to profit
from the agreement between the CIX members, without commiting
themselves to no-settlement traffic exchange.
A worst case case scenario:
ISP C connects through A to the CIX.
CIX member B manages to sell a connection to
a customer of C called D.
C blocks traffic to D from its customers.
Since D has an important business relationship
with a customer of C, they have no choice than
to move back to C.
Absolutely no recourse possible for D.
--
EUnet Switzerland Simon Poole
Zweierstrasse 35 Tel: +41 1 291 45 80
CH-8004 Zuerich Fax: +41 1 291 46 42 poole@eunet.ch
