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North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical Re: Peering versus Transit
First, let me thank those of you who took the time to correct my picture of the WayThingsAre. Still not sure if I like what I'm hearing, but as they say on Earth, c'est la vie. I've aggregated my various responses to everyone below so that those of you who don't wish to bother with the likes of me can just hit delete. No hard feelings; by all rights I've no business posting to this list anyway. But my net-tours and reading don't really compare to the amount I learn by (mostly) watching here. I think my confusion revolves around looking at this picture more from the end-user's (and the end-user's ISP chain) perspective. Maybe I'm just still confused, but as I see it, customers of an NSP who actually refuses packets addressed to them because they don't have an agreement with the sender have all right to be livid with rage. Don't get me wrong, I (think I) understand the info that has been posted regarding this. I'll try to explain my POV below so that y'all (the helpful ones) will know where I was/am coming from. ============================ >From [email protected] Sep 30 12:14:34 1996 > > Let us imagine, if we will, a truck. This truck has a rather odd > reddish-orange circle-ish emblem, and the letters S-P-R-I-N-T on > it. > > You notice inside a cellular phone. > > By what logic would you use the cellular phone for a personal > call to a chap who happens to have Sprint as an LD provider? > > And by what logic would you send packets to a node you aren't > "authorized" to? > > Silly analogies often provoke interesting defenses.... :-) Actually, this "silly analogy" helped me as much as any of the resultant flood of messages to understand where y'all were coming from. And to understand my perspective, one only has to make a couple of changes: -Aforementioned Sprint truck with cell phone. I'm walking nearby, minding my own business. -The phone rings. A guy in the truck picks it up. He then shouts to me "Hey, it's for you." -I take the phone; the caller asks me a question. I answer the question, and hang up the phone. By what logic should I have to pay Sprint in this scenario? I simply satisfied the request of one of Sprint's customers. Sprint's customer is the one who called, they're the one who caused the consumption of Sprint's resources by calling me and asking for my data. It seems that Sprint is charging me for the favor of keeping their customer happy. [Disclaimer: am NOT picking on Sprint, or attempting to characterize them in ANY way. The name is used merely as an example of a big provider.] =============================== >From [email protected] Sep 30 12:14:46 1996 > >1) There are people on the list who don't know everything. > >2) Those people want to learn how things work. > >3) These people are brave enough to come where the experts are > in order to learn. True, true, and *shiver*. My original message did indeed give me pause, because I figured I'd get flamed and/or shown to be a dumbass in front of people I a) respect, and b) hope to join someday. Not to mention that I can argue that I shouldn't be posting to this list anyway. But, I sent it when I realized that I'd rather be flamed and learn things than to not be flamed and remain ignorant. Has worked too; I *have* learned more of the NSP/IXP viewpoints than I knew before...one guy even wrote me a private email 'splaining a few of the points. Still not sure I'm happy with the viewpoints I've heard, but at least I know fully what they are now. >Of course it is much easier to flame up and coming ISP's than to educate >them. Many people take great satisfaction in doing this because it not >only gives them great personal satisfaction but it also ensures that the >up and comers will make dumb mistakes due to their lack of education and >cause endless heartburn as their routes flap and they crash your BGP >sessions, etc. Some people love this heartburn since it gives them more >fuel with which to flame people. Surprisingly the flames have been few, and the explainations many. The spirit of the Internet still lingers. Then again, perchance the flames were few because of your message. (: Note I don't count the dismissive message to be a flame; it was only typical of the author...have seen the same style for ages, harkening back to the FidoNet days. =================== >From [email protected] Sep 30 12:16:38 1996 > >Yes, but can we agree that dumping data to someons router at a NAP >without asking is steeling? First, I wouldn't call the act of sending data destined for, and requested by, a customer of A to a router owned by A to be "dumping". I'd call it "satisfying the customer's request". I'm not talking about pointing a default route or routing any other traffic other than traffic destined for a customer of A; in that case, I'd definately agree that it is stealing (umm..sic). If you refuse to accept traffic that is destined_for/requested_by your customers, I submit that you are screwing your customers. ==================== >From [email protected] Sep 30 12:24:57 1996 > >>Is it really the case that people with routers at exchange points actually >>consider a packet addressed to one of their own customers to be theft of >>service? So far, I note, we haven't heard any position expressed by >>any of the big folks, just by others outraged on their behalf. > >No, this is an attack. Do your customers know that you consider the normal receipt of data intended for them as an attack? That they can only get email, for example, from customers of *SPs you deem worthy? And y'all wonder why multihoming is such the rage. In fact, it's required to guard against all this BS when it becomes a problem. >Pointing default to somebody over IXP is simply theft. In effect you >get somebody's router to sort your packets out. Definately, no argument here. The problem is, nobody is talking about "pointing default"...for good reason; it's clearly theft at this level. We're talking about sending your customer's data to you; a place where it MUST go at some point. Your overall network traffic doesn't change at all. ===================== Apologies to all for this long message; I figured it was better to post one long one than many little ones so that I could be easily dismissed by those who don't have the time. Thanks to those of you who did take the time. (: Lon - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
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