North American Network Operators Group

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The original UUNET opinion on asymetric traffic settlements

  • From: Sean Donelan
  • Date: Sat Jun 02 05:08:08 2001

Never mind, I think I found my answer about asymetric settlement
policies between Internet providers.

==================================

Date: Tue, 29 Sep 92 23:29:33 -0400
From: [email protected] (Rick Adams)
To: [email protected], [email protected]

> There is no settlement fee in the CIX agreement.  This works well if 
> there is no significant net flow between any two networks in CIX.  Does 
> this assumption hold up in fact?

Which assumption? Or the implied and erroneous assumption that
if the trafic flow is asymmetric settlements are encessary?

Given no transit traffic, there is no need for settlements.

You have one of two cases:

1) both ends of the connection are by the same provider. If so, then
settling with yourself is obviously ludicrous.

2) Each end of the connection is by a different provider. Now, since
each end of the connection is supplied by a provider who is presumably
reasonably compensated for that provision, why is any "settlement"
necessary. Each customer is already paying for his half circuit.
Why do you need to charge more?

Most settlement proposals  are a very thinly disguised "tax" and have
nothing to do with actual costs or anything else for that matter.

Of course some of the taxes are enticing as a group of representatives
get to decide how best to spend the tax "for the comon good". However,
its still a tax.

---rick

p.s. The IRS just collects settlements that go into the Federal
Infrastrucutre pool where it is reallocated for the common good...