[8973] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Bad message address
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Stephen Williams)
Tue Dec 14 09:13:37 1993
From: sdw@meaddata.com (Stephen Williams)
To: karl@mcs.com (Karl Denninger)
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 1993 09:12:31 -0500 (EST)
Cc: com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: <m0p9SvX-000EpKC@mercury.mcs.com> from "Karl Denninger" at Dec 14, 93 00:08:07 am
>
>
> I tried to reply to Norman @ Pagesat.com but the mail bounced. I think you
Should be norman@pagesat.net. The .com record must have expired, but
they switched over quite a while ago.
> need to check your mailer. Thus, I'm posting here. His basic contention
> was that any customer's traffic (including indirect ones) was agreed to
> be routed. My response was:
>
> > Not quite.
> >
> > The members will route other <member's> generated traffic. The definition
> > of such a member is a customer of the member, or the member itself. Back-door
> > arrangements are not part of that.
Are they specifically not part of that? If traffic is routed 'without
discrimination', what precludes other arrangements? Is it implied
that billing agents are prohibited? (In some arrangements, it
wouldn't amount to much more than that.)
I would really like to see a clear consensus. If I can't afford a T1,
it's unlikely that I'm going to want to pay $10,000. I want small
providers to be viable so they can grow into large ones.
> Let me add to that from a copy of the actual agreement right here. The
> agreement does specify <direct> customers in saying that the traffic shall
> be routed without discrimination (or settlement). It says that you <can>
> allow indirect connectivity, but not that you <must>. That puts the onus
> on the network provider to decide.
>
> In point of fact that's an ugly clause. If you can prove that some number
> of members colluded in going one way or the other, you might very well have
> an anti-trust action unrelated to the CIX itself but still significantly
> damning.
IMHO, it's not in the spirit of internet, whatever that means, to not
route. It's also potentially very damaging. From what little I know
about telephony from the beginning of the century, I believe that many
of the competing providers were forced out of business by the larger
providers in each market siding with the gov. I believe this happened
because they didn't voluntarily 'route' calls.
sdw
--
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