North American Network Operators Group

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RE: ratios

  • From: Daniel Golding
  • Date: Thu May 09 13:07:27 2002

I have some trouble seeing why folks are so interested in meeting or
debating peering requirements set out by carriers that have made it quite
clear that they are not taking new peers. Most of the published requirements
from these carriers serve two functions - to prevent new peers, and to
depeer those who are felt to be not worthy. And even the latter is tenuous -
most bilateral peering agreements allow for cancellation at will for
absolutely no cause.

Peering is a business relationship. Refusing to peer does not make one bad,
nor does it damn the peering coordinator to eternal damnation. It also does
not reflect on those who work for the carrier in other roles, especially
those brave enough to post to NANOG on peering matters. Some folks take
exception to having ANY sort of peering requirements, like the person who
told me that they thought a carrier that required bicoastal peering and an
OC-12 network has peering requirements "worse than UUNET". Peering
requirements, especially rational ones like multiple location peering, are
not in any way bad.

If you don't approve of a carrier's peering policy, you have a couple
options...

You can publicly denounce them on a forum like this, which has doubtful
effect.

You can turn away their sales folks, the next time they try to sell you
transit. However, if you say "I won't buy transit from you, because you
won't peer from me", don't expect any sort of reaction other than "goodbye",
because there is no lost revenue potential - you would never have purchased
transit in any case. However, if you say "because you won't peer with other
large networks, it decreases the quality of your network, so I won't buy
your transit". They may be more effective. However, that needs to happen
much more than the sales people hear "I won't buy transit from you because
I'm a peer".

You can take it out on individuals who you feel are responsible, by refusing
to do business with them or hire them in the future. This is very tricky, as
all employees of a carrier are not in any way responsible for a carrier's
peering policy. Of course, if you get some weasel who comes in for a job
interview, with "senior peering engineer" on their resume, and brags about
his role in depeering, say, PSI, then I suppose such persons deserve what
they get. However, it's rare that this comes up. Additionally, punishing
folks for enforcing rational peering requirements is counterproductive.

I guess the best thing you can do is not take peering matters personally,
and to remember that peering decisions are business decisions, and they by
personalizing them, it creates unnecessary animosity.

- Daniel Golding


> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]]On Behalf Of
> Ralph Doncaster
> Sent: Thursday, May 09, 2002 12:20 PM
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: Re: ratios
>
>
>
> > Plus, wtf is this clause about announcing 5000 routes?  What a crock of
> > s**t!  This really encourages aggregation, doesn't it?
>
> And even AS6461 barely squeaks by with 5571 routes the last time I checked
> a couple weeks ago.  I don't think this policy is for real - if they
> actually enforce it then it will completely change the tier-1 landscape.
> Here's few more stats I just checked:
> Verio AS2914 - 1430 prefixes
> L3 AS3356 4168 prefixes
> Genuity AS1 - 7406 prefixes
>
> -Ralph
>
>