On Dec 19, 2009, at 1:47 AM, Fred Baker wrote:
I can read tea leaves with the best of them, and the tea leaves I see tell me the reporter (in the story the blog points to) doesn't have a clue. What is the substance of the proposal?
The report seemed a reasonably accurate account of what went on in Kampala.
But what is all this about "is the ITU interested in changing BGP"? If the word "metering" makes any sense in context, BGP doesn't meter anything.
The Chinese delegation presented a dozen pages of formulae involving 20+ variables, infinite sums, and other mathematical goodies. Wowing the audience I guess. The whole way through "using BGP" was mentioned - in the sense of pulling data from, and adding data to BGP for the purposes of evaluating these formulae. It was clear that BGP would be used - and modified if need be - to achieve this. Mixing billing with the reachability information signalled through BGP just doesn't seem like a good idea.
Interesting to note was that nowhere was the intent of all this mentioned, which is presumably to calculate the "value" each and every party's traffic traversing a link generates, and to apportion "costs" accordingly.
Misguided, nonsensical, and unworkable ideas often gain traction. It's important that this one doesn't.
Cheers, Jonny.
