North American Network Operators Group

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Re: Peering versus Transit

  • From: Alan Hannan
  • Date: Wed Oct 02 12:08:46 1996

  Hi Alexis,

> It's a really bad decision. It saves the cost of hiring a real engineer, but
> who wants to see a repeat of MAE-East? IXPs need a real traffic cop, at the
> very least, to wreak havoc on people who play nasty link-layer games. (Yes,
> it's conceivable that everyone on the IXP could guard themselves, but this
> is highly inefficient both in dollars and hours spent.)

  It would seem to me that you've two rather positive choices ->
  Elect the Routing Arbiter (Hi Bill :-) to police the XPs, or
  through capitalism force the XP operators to implement such a
  service.

  The former would be difficult as the're A/ overworked, and B/
  officially powerless at the XPs (unless the XPs annoint them, which
  is highly suspect).  The latter would be difficult in light of a
  Robert Heinlein quote:

      " If you give the people the ability to vote themselves bread
        and circuses, they will.  "

  The market is used to cheap/low quality.  While physically the XPs
  meet most quality levels (arguable), they haven't an interest in
  layer 4 or above (just L8 and especially not L9).

  Were the market to change (it might) we could have this.  Or, one
  could create another market.  Several smallerish XPs (StLouiX)
  comes to mind, have high quality peering standards built into
  them.  I believe the CIX has done a fairly good job at this in the
  past.

  But, it's my opinion that the only way to get MFS/PB/SL/AADS to
  listen is with the pocketbook.

  -alan



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