[11458] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: The whole CIX concept is flawed
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (James Waldrop)
Sun Apr 3 08:02:06 1994
To: bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein)
Cc: bilse@eu.net, com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sat, 02 Apr 1994 19:57:02 EST."
<199404030057.AA12331@world.std.com>
Date: Sun, 03 Apr 1994 04:41:40 -0400
From: James Waldrop <jlw@cs.columbia.edu>
Ok, I give up, $10K isn't all that much, as my own little example
showed. ;-) I still think that paying $10K for a service that
you already have is bad business sense.
Barry Shein wrote:
>>My fundamental problem with this fee is that it creates an artificial
>>distinction between selling IP and selling a shell.
>
>Now that's a different point, I was responding to the claim that it
>was exclusionary and preferential to big corporations.
Lets talk about this one. You're right, $10K isn't a lot, assuming
that a business is in the black in the first place.
>>You can't conceivably
>>get any more bandwidth out of your link, a 56K can only go so fast. You
>>don't get any additional ability to go any places you couldn't go before.
>>What is this $10K buying me again?
>
>Per host routing across all CIX member networks for one thing. And
>whatever coordination etc that entails, salaries etc.
Wasn't I getting that before? As far as I know (and I'm no network
guru) there's no list that Sprint maintains that has all the "known"
machines in my network. I was under the impression that it's
actually work on Sprint's part to deny routing to things like
dynamically assigned SLIP addresses.
>I mean, as I said before, if it's not worth anything to you ("you" in
>the broad sense), then by all means don't pay it. However, if it is
>worth something then we're just haggling the price at best. Is this
>the place to haggle the price? I dunno. But is there anything more
>going on here?
Yes, I still haven't heard a good description of what this fee
is getting me...
Lets look at it from another standpoint. Exactly who is losing money
if I *don't* pay this fee? Sprint could care less, I'm paying for my
line like a good boy and there's not much chance of it carrying more
than its capacity, no matter how many IPs I happen to service. CIX
routers don't seem to care, they route my traffic the same whether I'm
one machine or many. It actually costs CIX money to *not* route me.
If I'm coming through Sprint, and not reselling my bandwidth, then
I get routed fine anywhere I want to go. If I decide to sell a
SLIP account to someone, I pay CIX my $10K and get...what? I'm
still routing through Sprint and I don't have anything to do with
CIX at all except that I'm now a "member." One hopes I at least
get a nice four-color newsletter... ;-)
What is the fundamental distinction between traffice originating from a
shell account and traffic originating from a machine running SLIP?
James Waldrop
jlw@cs.columbia.edu
sulam@well.sf.ca.us
