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North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical Re: Cable & Wireless "de-peering"?!?
I do still think UUnet is in a downward spiral, just like C&W. Strong peering policies are not good for the Internet. Is this just an opinion, or do you have evidence? A genuine impartial economic analysis of this issue would be very interesting, and probably even more interesting to the regulators. I would hope any such analysis will include cost of maintenance and stability of networks with n interconnects as n increases. Most regulation theory looks to minimize customer price over the long term. This does not necessarilly mean maximizing competion (though it normally but not always means no monopolies). European regulation in this area (yes it exists) focusses only on those with Significant Market Power (variously defined but normally 25% or above of the 'Relevant Market'), and suggests that their interconnect policies should be non-discriminatory and cost-oriented. In my book that means that A has 30,000 routes of 100,000, and B has 2 routes, then B is paying A. (before saying that 'but B would charge A too' remember that A probably has the opportunity to exchange data via B's transit, at, no doubt, a lower cost per bit). In the mean time their view is, in general, that if what you say is true (downward spiral etc.) because their peering policy is suboptimal, then this just allows some competitor with a more optimal peering policy to gain competitive advantage. IMHO there is a high correlation between people claiming strong peering policies are 'bad for the internet' and those recently refused peering. Thus data samples are somewhat skewed. -- Alex Bligh Personal Capacity
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