[11355] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Some simple questions (was Re:The whole CIX concept is flawed)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Anonymous)
Wed Mar 30 05:31:27 1994
Date: Tue, 29 Mar 94 11:03:21 -0500
From: Anonymous <nowhere@bsu-cs.bsu.edu>
To: com-priv@psi.com
karl@mcs.com (Karl Denninger) writes:
>Nonsense.
>
>I've said this a few thousand times, and I'll say it once more:
> NOTHING in the CIX Agreement is a negative obligation that leads to
> the <CIX> cutting people off.
>What has been said is that the providers, unless they're CIX members, MAY
>cut people off at their discretion.
The question is WHY would they do it and even if the CIX agreement doesn't
OBLIGATE them to cut off non-CIX providers, what is the intention of the
CIX, concretely, regarding non-member providers? The only thing that I've
seen or heard is that there is no obligation to cut off routing, however
there have been implications that they may do this and I'd like the
intentions stated concretely so we don't need to play guessing games.
WILL or WILL NOT CIX possibly cut them off, if so for what reason? Or if
they can't say now for what possible reason might they consider it ever in
the future?
The obvious reason would be to get their protection money. And THE
question then is how will they justify this to their customers who get hurt
by this by losing connectivity themselves? CIX can't speak for the
individual ISPs I understand. However, an additional question would be do
any of them plan to cut off non CIX provider routing? If so how will they
justify to their customers cutting their customers off from places they may
wish to reach? (ie. Sorry customer X, you can't reach your subcontractor
now because we feel like screwing one of our competitors despite the fact
that we are screwing one of our customers at the same time). I have seen NO
reasonable response to this issue.
>> The network will grow through alot of grass roots providers, so we wish to
>> make sure they don't have problems and can get on with building the
>> network.
>
>The problem is, as I see it, that those "grass roots" providers want
>something for nothing. Can't happen in the real world.
No. Providing routine between two ISPs, or an ISP and all the CIX providers
benefits BOTH sides in increased conectivity (and potential increased usage
leading to people buying larger pipes). A simple question, if two ISPs
connect and route traffic, WHY should the smaller ISP pay the larger ISP?
(if anything the smaller ISP may have more overhead to route to the
larger). Why shouldn't the larger pay the smaller? The real question is
why either should pay the other. For each connection between them, there is
a customer X on the ISP A side, and customer Y on the ISP B side, and if
there isn't a routing it is hurting BOTH SIDES EQUALLY. Its only that
percentage of traffic wise it hurts the larger one less, and so they can
extort money from the smaller one.
We aren't trying to get something for nothing, we'll pay for things that
it makes sense to charge for such as bandwidth, and actual direct
connections. We'll happily pay someplace $10k year for routing, if they'll
then pay us $10k a year in return for routing them.
The paperwork is just much easier without that.
We could just as well try to bill the CIX, or individual ISPs for routing
their traffic, we just can't get away with it since we are small enough
they don't care whether we route them or not.
I'd like a simple explanation of why, other than the fact they can get
away with it, CIX or any other ISP should be paid for routing that benefits
both sides. We'll pay for the pipe to connect to the net, but why should we
join CIX?? What do we get, aside from not being cut off? (ie "protection")
Why am I posting anonymously? I don't currently know the intentions of CIX
and its member providers regarding routing to non-members, and I don't wish
them to decide to use us as an example. I've had no qualms in participating
in more controversial discussions on other lists non-anonymously, however
there wasn't the concern about being cut off. As far as I know at the
moment CIX could at any time decide to cut off routing to us (and as the
fellow from EUnet mentioned, there wouldn't be anyone out there to come to
our rescue). If we had someplace as popular as wuarchive for instance they
wouldn't be able to do that without their customers screaming. But we
don't.
