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Re: UUNET Pulling Peering Agreements & replacing them with charging under non-disclosure?

  • From: Matthew E. Pearson
  • Date: Fri May 02 00:07:16 1997

At 10:46 PM 5/1/97 -0400, Gordon Cook wrote:
>I have just had a phone call from a particpant in the news conference of
>the well. What UUNET is doing to many of its peers, including the Well, is
>now clear. According to my caller, Dave Hughes, it has served notice to
>many if not most of its peers that, in late May and early June, it will
>either terminate their peering session or that the peers will have to
>start paying for the privilege. How much will be charged and under what
>conditions is unknown.  Why? Because the unfortunate peers either have to
>**sign non disclosure agreements before** they even sit down with UUNET or
>simply be cut off.

Now how pathetic is this? UUNET one of the original pioneers of the
Commercial Internet, one of the Flagships of open systems, standards, and
connectivity now wants to extort money from other networks for peering? As
if they don't make enough money. Gee wouldn't it really suck for all of
UUNet's customers and MSN etc if a company like ConXion no longer had UUNET
peering? Gee they couldn't download any Microsoft products anymore! True,
UUNET is big, true they have many good sites and on-line resources for
customers. But, they are not so good that they deserve some mega-high price
for the honor of accessing their customers. After all, why do you need a
confidentiality agreement if your prices are reasonable? Put a gag-order on
people from complaining about pricing...

This is also practically extortion. "Yes, we are peers, we have already
decided that our customers and yours would benefit, but YOU and YOUR
customers should pay to access ours...." Maybe everyone should pull out of
peering with UUNET and tell them they need to pay US to peer. Just my $0.02

I am all for a commercial Internet, but this takes it WAY to far for my
tastes. At least true telecom carriers are regulated in what they can
charge for interconnects by the FCC or another governmental body in their
own country. Sheesh..

Send all flames to: [email protected]


-------------------------------------------------
Matthew E. Pearson
Vice President of Development
Games-Online Inc.
http://www.games-online.com
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