[11328] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: The whole CIX concept is flawed (as presented to the public at
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Joseph W. Stroup)
Tue Mar 29 10:38:37 1994
Date: Mon, 28 Mar 1994 15:42:39 -0800 (PST)
From: "Joseph W. Stroup" <nettech@crl.com>
To: Anonymous <nowhere@bsu-cs.bsu.edu>
Cc: com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: <9403281502.AA19615@bsu-cs.bsu.edu>
Why the anonymous posting ?
Joseph Stroup
On Mon, 28 Mar 1994, Anonymous wrote:
> 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.
>
>
>
>
