[11401] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Use market forces to deal with routing questions & charging
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Anonymous)
Thu Mar 31 14:51:06 1994
Date: Thu, 31 Mar 94 11:50:19 -0500
From: Anonymous <nowhere@bsu-cs.bsu.edu>
To: com-priv@psi.com
The real way to ensure routing among commercial ISPs is as I mentioned to
make it a marketing issue. The real way for ISPs to protect themselves from
competitors cutting off routing is to band together to say its not an
acceptable policy. If some ISP cuts off routing, then competitors should
immediately alert the customers of their ISP that it is playing games at
their expense, and use that as a marketing issue perhaps to compete in that
market. People are buying connectivity to as much of the net as they can
get.
In terms of the traffic that gets routed through a pipe, CIX shouldn't
care if Sprint (or whoever), resells it to another provider. Traffic routed
through CIX is at one endpoint at least connecting to a CIX customer. CIX
customers should be paying for the pipe. Essentially ISPs all provide
pipes, its up to them to make sure its priced so that all of its *direct*
connects pay for that pipe, rather than policing all the indirect
connections and getting into murky water of who pays who. Given the
ambiguity of what is a backbone, differing connectivity speeds to various
parts of the net, etc., the only way to make sense of a tangled network is
basically that each provider owns their node. They pay other nodes what
they think it is worth to get connectivity to that node, and customers pay
them in return to connect to their node. All pricing is done through direct
negotiation with the nodes connecting to you. Its basically just like the
free market, you pay directly for what physical items you buy, and the
manufacturer pays all its suppliers, the suppliers don't start charging you
directly. The web may be more tangled than usual production activities,
but the same methods and market forces can work.
I think the CIX is mixing up the issues of providing a backbone with
guarenteeing cooperative routing, because it should be extremely cheap for
agreements to be signed, and would encourage much more of the industry to
come on board without blinking an eye rather than charging what they are.
The only possible use I could see for charging large $ per year would be
for a different sort of cooperative associate, which agreed to pool the
money to form sort of an insurance policy, which would be used to advertise
against any ISP that cut off routing to bully their competitors. This money
would be only availible to ISPs joining the pool, but then joining would be
voluntary with no threat at all of cutting off routing (in fact the
agreement should be that routing is not cut off to any other ISP, member or
not). I'm not sure if this is worthwhile, however if ISPs are concerned
about other ISPs bullying them then voluntary insurance makes sense. And
fighting back with only the truth makes sense (ie telling current and
potential customers that the ISP who cuts off routing is hurting THEM).
Don't force those of us who don't wish to to pay for your protection, we'll
decide if we wish to join in.
