[11387] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
re: The whole CIX concept is flawed
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Anonymous)
Thu Mar 31 02:04:38 1994
Date: Wed, 30 Mar 94 21:46:25 -0500
From: Anonymous <nowhere@bsu-cs.bsu.edu>
To: com-priv@psi.com
karl@mcs.com (Karl Denninger) writes:
>I find this interesting, to say the least. MCSNet is another of those
>"small" providers. Just look at the routes we announce. Only a few from
>our AS, 3365. Yet we are growing like crazy -- and why? Because we're
>STRAIGHT WITH THE PUBLIC AND OUR CUSTOMERS -- above and beyond everything
>else.
From what I've read here you are attempting to be (as are we, as I mention
below). I don't think the CIX is, its leaving too much ambiguous and as I
said intimidating people into paying money to join it.
As you said yourself:
>Yep. And that is the problem with settlements. Extortion.
Will the CIX please stand up then and be straight with the public and
their customers admit what they are doing? Or state categorically that they
won't play games with blocking routing to ISPs that don't pay their
protection money? As I mentioned elsewhere, we'll gladly pay whoever offers
the best connectivity, etc., and pay for the infrastructure. I agree with
the discussion in your message that for instance if two ISPs are
connecting, they need to negotiate between them how much it is worth, and
who would pay who (or not), etc. Thats fine. However, we are not connecting
directly to CIX. We are paying another ISP, and that should be part of
their operating expense. If the CIX were just operating as another backbone
that you could pay for a pipe to that would be fine, its this thing about
wanting people that don't connect to it directly to pay them thats the
problem. If you only pay the people you directly connect to, you have a
choice. You can go elsewhere, try to negotiate better rates, etc. However
this backbone is saying, we don't care who you connect to, we want you to
pay us, and there is no negotiation between us, you don't have a choice.
>Hiding behind "someone might spank me, but I don't think I'm being bad" is
>a VERY BAD idea. Do you tell your customers that you're concerned about
>this issue? If you are, and it IS a material risk to you, then you're
>committing fraud by keeping silent if their expectation is that they can
>route to and through CIX members.
We aren't hiding behind that, it is known that we don't belong to CIX, and
if it becomes an issue we will consider paying their extortion money if we
have to. We are more upfront with our customers and potential customers
than CIX is as far as I can tell about that, I'm just not chosing to be
known in this forum since I didn't know if CIX would decide to try to make
an example of us, and I'd rather avoid paying $10,000 we don't need to, and
I guess we feel that this racket has a finite lifetime. And that perhaps
we'll get to a point where CIX customers will yell if they are cut off from
ours.
CIX doesn't encompass all providers, do you make your customers aware that
they may not be able to be routed to non-CIX members? Are you keeping
silent about that material risk?
If they cut us off, they'd be cutting you off from our customers. Someone
said connectivity to the entire net isn't guarenteed, you can't guarentee
it any more than we can, so I don't really see much difference, other than
the fact that we know of one particular connection that might decide to go
away (and force us to pay to get it back). (And actually although we are
smaller, that would be one connection that you would loose at the same
time).
I really see no way at all that we are at any more risk than you or doing
anything different (aside from not paying the CIX).
