[11300] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: The whole CIX concept is flawed (as presented to the public at
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Anonymous)
Mon Mar 28 17:28:11 1994
Date: Mon, 28 Mar 94 10:02:22 -0500
From: Anonymous <nowhere@bsu-cs.bsu.edu>
To: com-priv@psi.com
least)
Simon Poole <poole@magnolia.eunet.ch> writes:
>You (however you are) seem to have a large number of misconceptions
>about the Internet and the role of the CIX.
Actually, the problem seems to be that people like you have
misconceptions about rational business practices and what best serves the
needs of ISP customers. Meeting customer needs is the way to compete, not
sinking to the level of the slimy business practices that you were a victim
of yourself.
>-Nobody- guarentees you connectivity to the whole Internet. I might
>decide tomorrow that you are competing with us for the same customers
>and decide to stop routing packets to you, effectivly closing you
>out of the market, -nobody- will come rushing up to help you.
Except YOUR customers, if they realize that they NEED access to one of my
customers. Perhaps people can get away with this sometimes now, but to me
it seems it should become a marketing issue, since people will prefer
providers that connect them to as much of the net as possible, and don't
play childish games in an attempt to bully the competition. It is legal,
but personally I don't think the industry should be built on this type of
tactic, and that especially something posing as an industry association
shouldn't advocate it. As more competition arises, this type of tactic will
stop working.
>I consider myself to be a bit of the expert on the matter. When
>we started providing EUnet services here in Switzerland again three
>years ago, our major competitior tried to bully us out of the market
>by blocking traffic to some of our key customers (they kept this
>up for nearly a year). We had -no- recourse, nobody helped us and
>undoubtably it nearly killed us.
I see no reason then to adopt the same type of slimy business practise
your competitor did, to try this type of competition that hurts BOTH sides.
If a competitor blocks traffic to your customers, he is blocking access for
HIS customers to those places. Currently people get away with that, yet
more customers are going to get disgusted at these tactics when they NEED
access to some site whose traffic is being blocked by their provider. The
answer is to ask the other provider's customers to yell at the other ISP
for using this tactic and cutting THEM off from other sites just to play
childish games.
The answer isn't to form into larger gangs to bully everyone into joining
the largest gang. The answer is for people to stop this practice and make
it a marketing issue, that if you sign up with provider X, who is cutting
off routes, that you will be hurt by these petty techniques X is using.
>Talking to prospective customers and finding out that while they
>would really like to connect to you (because of price, service and
>so on), but found it impossible because our competitior had told them
>that they would immediately block traffic to them, is not my idea of
>fun.
And so why then do you wish to inflict this on others? I don't believe
this is the only way to accomplish things, unless people simply give into
it and adopt this as the style of the industry, which will give all the
customers a bad impression of these companies ethics and won't exactly
inspire cusotmer loyalty.
Basically you were the victim of a gang trying to be a protection racket,
and so you want to join a larger gang.
Perhaps nobody guarantees access to the whole internet. However, the way to
market is to say that we'll try to give you access to as much as possible
of the net. Not to say we'll give you access to as much of the net as we
can as long as it doesn't interfere with the games we are playing to hurt
the competition. Compete on trying to please the customers rather than
hurting the competition, or it may come back to haunt you when a competitor
does the same thing to you.
