North American Network Operators Group
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Re: Paying for delivery of packets (was about Sprint Peering, and Importance of Content)

  • From: JC Dill
  • Date: Fri Jul 12 02:54:39 2002

On 08:33 PM 7/11/02, Barney Wolff wrote:
>
>On Thu, Jul 11, 2002 at 08:00:45PM -0700, JC Dill wrote:
>>
>> The problem with asymmetric pricing is that the cost of passing the packets
>> is equally born by both ends. Take 2 networks that peer, one with mostly
>> content, one with mostly eyeballs. The content providers pay a higher
>> price *per MB* for bandwidth to their provider than the end user does, but
>> both networks have equal costs in transiting the packets from the server to
>> the end user.
>
>This might be true per Mbps of capacity, but is simply not true per average
>user's MB/month. The typical cable/dsl subscriber still only uses about
>5-10 Kbps, averaged over a month.

Of course it's not true if you compare "one user" to "one content provider". That comparison is useless.

What you need to compare is $100,000/month (or more) worth of customers, either all content providers, or all end users. Which group requires more total bandwidth, and more resilient (redundant) connections? Which group is more resistant to price increases, more likely to just turn off their services (or switch to a lower cost provider) rather than pay more if prices go up (or service goes down)? Which group is more concerned with Five Nines?

Clearly, one group has a greater interest in ensuring that their packets are sent as fast as possible, as reliably as possible. Yet, both groups are equally important for the network (as a whole) to work. My prediction is that over time, this one group will be willing to foot more and more of the total cost of the network (from end to end).

>If lots of people start watching video
>streams for much of the day, current cable/dsl rates will not survive.

Current cable/dsl rates will survive (or even decrease), *if* there are settlements that subsidize the increased bandwidth use/cost from the content providers to the "eyeball" networks that feed the end users.

jc