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Re: Sprint peering policy

  • From: Mike Leber
  • Date: Sat Jun 29 01:35:07 2002

On 29 Jun 2002, Vijay Gill wrote:
> Mike Leber <[email protected]> writes:
> 
> > Sprint's peers aren't equal to Sprint or each other when considered by
> > revenue, profitability, number of customers, or geographical coverage.
> 
> A good proxy for the above is to ask the question:
> 
>  Do X and Y feel they derive equal value (for some value of equal) by
>  interconnecting with each other? 

This incorrectly presumes that being equal is necessary, when in truth
each party is going to have a threshold and method for determining the
value of the exchange that is independent of the other parties
preconceptions.

Point in case, most networks care significantly more about what they get
out of a peering session than what the their peers get out of it.  And
this is correct and valid because only by paying attention to the actual
underlying economic reasons for making peering decisions will they be able
to ensure they stay in business.

>  If they think they do, then an interconnection is set up between X
>  and Y. However, if one party feels that they do NOT derive equal
>  value by interconnecting with the other, than that party usually
>  balks.

By your reasoning all ventures should be 50/50 partnerships, which they
aren't.

I'll concede if a network were to percieve themselves as a majority share
holder and think themselves large enough to effect the underlying price of
bandwidth in the market then they might focus primarily on how to prevent
another network from making more money than them from a peering agreement,
as you describe.  However, based on all the bankruptcies they should be
more focused on their own immediate operational costs and staying in
business than worrying about any single competitor.

>  X states that they would only feel equal value is derived by both
>  parties if traffic between X and the other party is n mb/s with a
>  ratio of p:q.  Y disagrees. They do not interconnect. This causes
>  pain.  

Again, this is proof of my first point above, that each network has its
own method of evaluating peering and that their method matters more to
them than what the peer thinks.

> > to make sense of their peering policy, just accept the fact that each
> > company has policies that they believe to be in their best interests and
> > omit the pretense of justifying this by the movement of heavenly bodies in
> > the spheres.
> 
> I think we are in agreement here.

I figured, I just couldn't let you get away with the equal remark lest
onlookers pickup bad attitudes.  :-P

Mike.

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