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Re: Peering Table Question

  • From: I Am Not An Isp
  • Date: Mon Apr 24 10:10:40 2000


At 06:29 AM 4/24/00 -0700, Randy Bush wrote:

>> May I conjecture, in the light of the current discussion, that a "tier 1"
>> ISP is one which makes a net profit from "peering" and a "tier 2" is one
>> that does not ? Or is it that a "tier 2" ISP has real customers ?
>
>teir-1s don't pay for routing to anywhere. tier-2s pay for routes from
>tier-1s and may also pay for transit.

The CTO of GTEI/BBN claimed that if their traffic flows were > 2:1 outbound to any network, they would pay the "peer" network for the imbalance. I do not know if their traffic is that unbalanced to any other network, but it is definitely a possible scenario. Would that make AS1 a "tier 2"?

Why does the fact that a network is willing to pay peers for an obviously inequitable traffic balance make that network a non-tier-1? Why does that not just make them fair and reasonable?

Of course, there are other ways of being "fair", such as the network with the web sites offering to carry the traffic long haul. But that would require an exchange of MEDs, something which you have personally claimed was a Bad Thing for years.


So please help me understand how it is possible for a network which specializes in web hosting to become a tier-1? Even if it had a gigantic percentage of traffic on the Internet, other networks would still want it to pay for the traffic imbalance.

Or does the definition of "tier-1" now include "balanced traffic flows"?


>randy

TTFN,
patrick

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