[11435] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: The whole CIX concept is flawed
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (James Waldrop)
Sat Apr 2 16:18:02 1994
To: Per Gregers Bilse <bilse@eu.net>
Cc: com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 31 Mar 1994 19:42:01 +0200."
<199403311742.AA26639@spades.EU.net>
Date: Sat, 02 Apr 1994 13:42:41 -0500
From: James Waldrop <jlw@cs.columbia.edu>
[ Please note that I blind carbon copied some people on this... ]
Per Gregers Bilse wrote:
>You want that guarantee for free. Sorry, can't be done. For one
>thing, there are real operational costs (manpower, equipment, office
>space, etc) associated with the CIX itself. The fact that you
>transit via somebody else doesn't reduce the need for the CIX to be
>there. Why should you, as an ISP, be allowed to get all the benefits
>of CIX membership, without chipping in? Foul play.
I think you're missing our anonymous friend's point. All of the
costs asociated with routing CIX direct connections are presumably
paid by the CIX connection fee, *not* the CIX membership fee.
Exactly what service is CIX returning for its $10K? If ANS CO+RE
suddenly decided to "play fair" and force all of its resellers
to pay the fee, exactly where would that money go? Not into
routers, new leased lines, or any other such thing, since it seems
those are already in place. Such a windfall could be used to line
a few pockets, I'm sure, or it could perhaps be used for other, more
charitable services such as connecting libraries or what-have-you.
At any rate, "protection" seems to be a perfect description of
what we are talking about here. If two people can agree not to
fight among each other, then there is no need to pay a third
party to enforce the peace. We humans have problems with this,
ornery creatures that we are, but a router doesn't have to deal
with emotional issues...
Lets say that a site paid its $10K fee and then proved itself to
be a bad net.citizen, either by volumes of unsolicited advertising
or a series of network breakins originating from that domain.
Would this $10K then be used to "police" this site?
In fact, the $10K seems to me to be more of a barrier to entry --
an anticompetitive agreement among certain large ISPs. Sprint
can afford to pay the $10K, and is probably happier than not
that Mr Anonymous's company is less able. So in fact this fee
becomes another sort of "protection" -- protection from competition.
And Sprint is one of the founders of CIX. Interesting. What if
the BofD should someday meet and decide that, due to inflationary
pressures etc, the $10K/year fee is now $100K? Cough up or quit
competing. I might speculate that MCS would no longer be able
to afford this fee, and would have to quit reselling IP connections.
Based on this, I think I can make the assertion that the CIX fee,
prohibitive as it is, actually INHIBITS the growth of the Internet.
James Waldrop
jlw@cs.columbia.edu
sulam@well.sf.ca.us
