[1869] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Understanding Combits: Procrustes Where are you?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Gordon Cook)
Sat Jan 4 00:17:08 1992
To: com-priv@psi.com
Date: 3 Jan 92 23:34:06 EST (Fri)
From: cook@tmn.com (Gordon Cook)
<<MESSAGE from>> Gordon Cook 03-JAN-92 23:34
cook@tmn
Marvin Sirbu said:
The way I read the rules, if SURANET signs the connectivity
agreement, their R&E attached customers are free to exchange traffic
(both receive and send) to commericial customers of ANS with no cost
implication to SURANET whatsoever. This is because the formula specifies
that COMBITS between a commerical user and R&E site are counted as R&E
for mid- level supportinge R&E entity while counting as commericial for
the network supporting the commerical entity at the other end of the
communication. Thus no commericial COMBITs are credited to SURANET for
this traffic exchange. Under these circumstances, 100% of SURANET's
traffic is counted as R&E traffic and there is no surcharge to SURANET for
agreeing to carry this traffic.
SURANET incurs commercial COMBITs ONLY if a customer of SURANET declares
itself to be a commercial user (as opposed to an R&E user) -- and SURANET
agrees to accept such customers. At that point, traffic between the
commercial customer atttached to SURANET and commericial customers
attached to ANS are counted as commercial traffic for both SURANET and
ANS, and SURANET will be liable for a surcharge in proportion to the
amount of such traffic. That is why the statistics are collected based on
origin-destination pairs, and not simply based on the sender or the
destination. You need to be able to classify BOTH the origin and
destination in order to determine how the traffic is to be accounted for.
Would someone from ANS please verify this interpretation?
Marvin Sirbu
Engineering and Public Policy
Carnegie Mellon University
Guy Almes repleied for ANS that Marvin was correct.
Gordon Cook speaking: So what is measured then? Is it the amount of
combits going into SURAnet as compared to the amount of combits coming OUT
of SURAnet? If SURANET puts out more combits onto the back bone than it
takes in, it OWES ANS money. If ANS shoves more combits down SURAnets
throat than Suranet shoves back, ANS owes SURANET money?
What seems to go off the track in Guy Almes assertion that MARVIN's
summary is correct is that there were scenarios in the exchange that
Marvin's summary doesn't appear to deal with. I thought we had agreed
that if Sesquinet wanted to be able to receive traffic from DIALOG that
Sesquinet's signing the connectivity agreement would mean that it would be
forced to designate some of its institutions as commercial to do combits
with DIALOG? Jordan talks about supporting the exchange of traffic
bi-directionality. Marvin's explanation seems to say no its
unidirectional.
Can I ask the question differently? Can SURANET sign the connectivity
agreement with no obligation just so long as it doesn't have a customer
that declares itself commercial? I thought at this point that Jordan came
back and said "not quite" and then gave the explanation about
bi-directionality that I don't understand.
And while the explanation we see here appears to focus on a new commercial
user's impact, what the ANS agreement focus on is taking the PAST traffic
patterns of the mid-level and figuring on the basis of THAT what the next
year's bill is. For what? For an infrastructure pool that Al Weis says
is now worth $25,000? Lets say that ANS gets 100 NEW customers on its net
in the next year. My impression is that this would make the
imfrastructure pool grow to about $500,000?? In view of the fact that the
NSF is spending about $16 MILLION dollars a year on support of the
mid-levels totally apat from the backbone, how far does $500,000 go? And
why should commercial information providers sign up with ANS and find out
that they are unable to reach mid-levels that haven't signed the
connectivity agreements when they could sign with a mid-level, or with PSI
or Uunet and be able to reach ALL the mid-levels for less money?
Unless the NSF decides to descend with an iron hand and rewrite acceptable
use in a way that deprives those companies who wish to follow in Dialog's
path of any alternative accept ANS, the current situation remains
incomprehensible to me and that's disappointing because after yesterday's
exchange with Jordan, i thought I was beginning to understand. This whole
process seems so tortuous and the amount of time that it seems to take to
divine what is going on seems excessive. I have a feeling that we are
working with a Procrustean bed here and that we may wake up after
Procrustes lops off a few limbs and find out that what was acceptable use
last year is now subject to com-bits this year?? Is my level of anxiety
too high?
Lord it would be instructive to see an actuall analysis by ANS of a
mid-levels traffic that would explain in however much detail it took what
a connectivity agreement and then a gateway agreement with ANS would cost
and why? Sure it might be a twenty page document, but I think reading
twenty pages once would beat hours spent going back and forthhere in the
middle of a cloud bank. Even I can't spend an unlimited amount of time on
this. (I've got to find a new employer by February 28th remember. :-))
