RE: Peering vs SFI (was Re: Cogent/Level 3 depeering)
Would you care to speculate on which party receives the greater benefit: the sender of bytes, or the receiver of bytes? Nope! I'll let the economists argue about that question. Probably on some other list where people know a lot more about the issue of value than on this list. --Michael Dillon
RE: Peering vs SFI (was Re: Cogent/Level 3 depeering)
Paul Vixie wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Schliesser, Benson) writes: Would you care to speculate on which party receives the greater benefit: the sender of bytes, or the receiver of bytes? If both the sender and receiver are being billed for the traffic by their respective (different) service providers (all other issues being equal) is one provider in a better position than the other? If it's still common for one to be billed only for highest of in vs. out then there's no way to compare the benefits since there's always a shadow direction and it won't be symmetric among flow endpoints. Thank you, Paul. I'd be interested in your feedback on these thoughts of mine below. I do believe it is typical, perhaps with some variance but usually amounting to the same thing, that end-users are billed for the highest of in vs. out traffic, roughly the capacity they are provisioned. Thus if I may, I'll build on this to make a more concrete statement: each party in a peering relationship receives equal value for traffic exchanged. (traffic volume at the SFI translates into revenue from end-users) Things aren't so simple in reality, though: you have to look at the element left out of my statement above, the cost of traffic exchanged. If one peer terminates more traffic than it originates, and the originating peer is performing hot-potato routing, then the terminating peer typically has a higher cost burden as it has to transport the traffic the greater distance. However the opposite holds true if the originating peer is performing cold-potato routing. Thus, such things exist as traffic in/out ratios between peers. But this is a blunt tool which seems to help enforce the exclusivity of the Tier-1 club, and actually acts as a barrier to competition. That is, anybody with a different traffic pattern (i.e., because of a different business model) will be excluded from the club despite the fact that they bring equal value in the form of traffic volume to the relationship. And club-outsiders are subject to increased relative operating costs (cost of revenue) compared to club-insiders. So what is the solution? Warm-potato routing seems possible technically, providing an approximation of cost-burden fairness. Is the benefit worth the complexity to manage in practice? And clearly, I'm not advocating endless open peering--the revenue element of the equation (customers) must exist. So what is the best way to determine the criteria by which a network is determined to be a peer? Cheers, -Benson --- Benson Schliesser (email) mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] I barely understand my own thoughts, much worse those of my betters. Thus, the opinions expressed herein are not necessarily those of my employer. Ponder them at your own risk.
Re: Peering vs SFI (was Re: Cogent/Level 3 depeering)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Schliesser, Benson) writes: If it's still common for one to be billed only for highest of in vs. out then there's no way to compare the benefits since there's always a shadow direction and it won't be symmetric among flow endpoints. Thank you, Paul. I'd be interested in your feedback on these thoughts of mine below. I do believe it is typical, perhaps with some variance but usually amounting to the same thing, that end-users are billed for the highest of in vs. out traffic, roughly the capacity they are provisioned. Thus if I may, I'll build on this to make a more concrete statement: each party in a peering relationship receives equal value for traffic exchanged. (traffic volume at the SFI translates into revenue from end-users) value is subjective. that's what's so funny about depeering announcements and counterannouncements, where somebody always says words to effect of we're as big as they are, so there's no reason we should be paying them. that MAY be true. but it's not debatable. either the former peer will see it that way, or they won't. value is subjective, not democratic. so, i disagree that the parties receive equal value in the general case you cite. maybe they do, maybe they don't. that's for them to decide. each of them, that is, to decide. Things aren't so simple in reality, though: you have to look at the element left out of my statement above, the cost of traffic exchanged. If one peer terminates more traffic than it originates, and the originating peer is performing hot-potato routing, then the terminating peer typically has a higher cost burden as it has to transport the traffic the greater distance. However the opposite holds true if the originating peer is performing cold-potato routing. that summary is probably going to match the facts most of the time. but i know that cold-potato is really cheap for some people and really expensive for others, and that the circumstances that really will govern the costs and benefits of traffic exchange go way beyond how hot the potatoes are. Thus, such things exist as traffic in/out ratios between peers. But this is a blunt tool which seems to help enforce the exclusivity of the Tier-1 club, and actually acts as a barrier to competition. it's only a barrier to competition if it restricts customer choice or increases customer price. in other words, person X doesn't get to accuse a company of restricting competition because they're making it hard for person X to enter the business. person X would have to show that their own choices, as a customer, had been constrained or their costs had been increased in order to claim barrier to competition. otherwise it's just whinage. the game is, you enter the field, you invest in some infrastructure and build some channels, you pay what you have to pay to get access to the network that existed before you, you charge what the market will bear, you make up the difference (if there is one) with cash, and eventually you get big enough to have enough negotiating power that your peering/transit costs go down to where you have some margin. if you run out of cash, you go bankrupt and try again. if you win, then you become part of the backdrop against which new competitors enter the field. if you charge so much for access that new competitors need way more cash to get started, then you also increase what the market will bear to the point where you're very nearly helping new competitors as much as you're hurting them. the only way to win long-term is by staying efficient, never slacking, and being frugal, especially regarding debt. this leads to constant churn, even chaos and carnage, but ultimately it's better for the customers, in my opinion, than regulated monopoly would be. the thing that's irritating me at the moment is that network transit isn't matching other technology curves. as with the workstation on my desk, i do not want to pay less for my new machine than i paid two years ago, in fact i'm willing to pay the same, even adjusting for inflation. what i want is to get a lot more for that price now than i got two years ago. in transit pricing, that would mean we'd all be paying the same total every month that we paid when prices were $1000/Mbit/month, but we'd have 20X the bandwidth available. instead of fighting over a stagnant market we'd be competing to see who could get to the next order of magnitude faster (all without invalidating our physical plant faster than we could depreciate it.) but i digress. That is, anybody with a different traffic pattern (i.e., because of a different business model) will be excluded from the club despite the fact that they bring equal value in the form of traffic volume to the relationship. the value they bring is only equal if the folks they're bringing it to say it's equal. see above. And club-outsiders are subject to increased relative operating costs (cost of revenue) compared to
RE: Peering vs SFI (was Re: Cogent/Level 3 depeering)
Michael Dillon wrote: P.S. would the Internet be worse off if all traffic exchange was paid for and there was no settlement free interconnect at all? I.e. paid peering, paid full transit and paid partial transit on the menu? Would you care to speculate on which party receives the greater benefit: the sender of bytes, or the receiver of bytes? If both the sender and receiver are being billed for the traffic by their respective (different) service providers (all other issues being equal) is one provider in a better position than the other? Cheers, -Benson
Re: Peering vs SFI (was Re: Cogent/Level 3 depeering)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Schliesser, Benson) writes: Would you care to speculate on which party receives the greater benefit: the sender of bytes, or the receiver of bytes? If both the sender and receiver are being billed for the traffic by their respective (different) service providers (all other issues being equal) is one provider in a better position than the other? If it's still common for one to be billed only for highest of in vs. out then there's no way to compare the benefits since there's always a shadow direction and it won't be symmetric among flow endpoints. -- Paul Vixie
Re: Peering vs SFI (was Re: Cogent/Level 3 depeering)
Richard Irving wrote: /lurk Maybe not, the depeering L3 is involved in is sort of like blackmail, we can all thank the indicted ex-CEO of WorldCom, Bernie Ebbers, for the modern peering There can only be one rule set. Because you were there at the time Ebbers was going around? Do you have any idea of how this works? I am going to go ahead and say no. Brzzzt! lost both points. My prior email was [EMAIL PROTECTED], Charter Nanog member. 8-) [Querying whois.arin.net] [whois.arin.net] Name: Irving, Richard B Handle: RI69-ARIN Company:One Call Internet Address:One Call Internet Inc. Address:701 Congressional Blvd. City: Carmel StateProv: IN PostalCode: 46032 Country:US Comment:Old Internet Fossil ;) RegDate:1995-11-29 Updated:2002-09-05 Phone: +1-317-805-3742 (Office) Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] In the beginning it wasn't all sharks in suits, I swear!
Re: Peering vs SFI (was Re: Cogent/Level 3 depeering)
vijay gill wrote: There can only be *one* ! - WorldCom chant, Circa 1995. WorldCom didn't know what IP SFI was in 95. Perhaps you mean UUNET/MFS? Or, perhaps I mean Alternet, eh ? - A Rose by any other name
Re: Peering vs SFI (was Re: Cogent/Level 3 depeering)
Richard Irving wrote: Richard Irving wrote: /lurk Maybe not, the depeering L3 is involved in is sort of like blackmail, we can all thank the indicted ex-CEO of WorldCom, Bernie Ebbers, for the modern peering There can only be one rule set. Because you were there at the time Ebbers was going around? Do you have any idea of how this works? I am going to go ahead and say no. Brzzzt! lost both points. My prior email was [EMAIL PROTECTED], Charter Nanog member. 8-) Then perhaps you'd know better than to think that Bernie knew what peering even was? Apparently not. /vijay
Re: Peering vs SFI (was Re: Cogent/Level 3 depeering)
Richard Irving wrote: vijay gill wrote: There can only be *one* ! - WorldCom chant, Circa 1995. WorldCom didn't know what IP SFI was in 95. Perhaps you mean UUNET/MFS? Or, perhaps I mean Alternet, eh ? Perhaps this is a rolex on my wrist, but they seemed to have made a typo. They misspelled Rolex as timex? Service vs company might be useful distinctions. /vijay
Re: Peering vs SFI (was Re: Cogent/Level 3 depeering)
vijay gill wrote: Brzzzt! lost both points. My prior email was [EMAIL PROTECTED], Charter Nanog member. 8-) Then perhaps you'd know better than to think that Bernie knew what peering even was? Apparently not. Yada-Yada. *DO* try to be less vitriolic, TIA.. Those of you who know think you know it all, irritate those of us who -really- do. - C'ya! :-P as-set: AS-ONECALL descr: ONECALL transit AS's, and VNAP pathways members:AS-INDNET, AS-INDYNET, AS11820, AS87, AS5072, AS1767, AS5689, AS6402, AS7206, AS7900, AS8169, AS10680, AS11069, AS11550, AS4, AS22311, AS11780, AS10694, AS12277, AS13394, AS12074, AS10403, AS10718, AS6571, AS6164, AS11126, AS27443, AS11106, AS21997, AS-IEI, AS-IONENET, AS-21903, AS8011, AS26212
Re: Peering vs SFI (was Re: Cogent/Level 3 depeering)
On Wed, Oct 05, 2005 at 04:01:51PM -0500, Richard Irving wrote: Brzzzt! lost both points. My prior email was [EMAIL PROTECTED], Charter Nanog member. What is this Charter Nanog member and how does one get to be it? Do you get a cool t-shirt with it? -dorian
RE: Peering vs SFI (was Re: Cogent/Level 3 depeering)
There can only be *one* ! - WorldCom chant, Circa 1995. WorldCom didn't know what IP SFI was in 95. Perhaps you mean UUNET/MFS? Or, perhaps I mean Alternet, eh ? - A Rose by any other name Or if you change 1995 above to 1997, which was when UUNET 1st announced the end of free of charge interconnections, then WorldCom would be correct, as they had just recently purchased UUNET. At least that's the date I have in the following paper I wrote a while back: http://www.2sparrows.org/Sean/rit/final%20thesis.pdf It's fairly outdated now but may be a good read for those that haven't been around that long and seem to be a bit confused on peering vs. transit and other such things. At least the 1st 1/2 of it before it ventures off into telco realms. /Sean
Re: Peering vs SFI (was Re: Cogent/Level 3 depeering)
Sean Butler wrote: There can only be *one* ! - WorldCom chant, Circa 1995. WorldCom didn't know what IP SFI was in 95. Perhaps you mean UUNET/MFS? Or, perhaps I mean Alternet, eh ? - A Rose by any other name Or if you change 1995 above to 1997, which was when UUNET 1st announced the end of free of charge interconnections, then WorldCom would be correct, as they had just recently purchased UUNET. At least that's the date I have in the following paper I wrote a while back: http://www.2sparrows.org/Sean/rit/final%20thesis.pdf It's fairly outdated now but may be a good read for those that haven't been around that long and seem to be a bit confused on peering vs. transit and other such things. At least the 1st 1/2 of it before it ventures off into telco realms. /Sean I stand corrected, that was the moment. They say the memory is the first to go, and I can't remember what is second :-)
