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North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical RE: Peering vs SFI (was Re: Cogent/Level 3 depeering)
Paul Vixie wrote: > [email protected] ("Schliesser, Benson") writes: > >> Would you care to speculate on which party receives the greater benefit: >> the sender of bytes, or the receiver of bytes? >> >> If both the sender and receiver are being billed for the traffic by >> their respective (different) service providers (all other issues being >> equal) is one provider in a better position than the other? > > If it's still common for one to be billed only for "highest of in vs. out" > then there's no way to compare the benefits since there's always a "shadow" > direction and it won't be symmetric among flow endpoints. Thank you, Paul. I'd be interested in your feedback on these thoughts of mine below. I do believe it is typical, perhaps with some variance but usually amounting to the same thing, that end-users are billed for the "highest of in vs. out" traffic, roughly the capacity they are provisioned. Thus if I may, I'll build on this to make a more concrete statement: each party in a peering relationship receives equal value for traffic exchanged. (traffic volume at the SFI translates into revenue from end-users) Things aren't so simple in reality, though: you have to look at the element left out of my statement above, the "cost" of traffic exchanged. If one peer terminates more traffic than it originates, and the originating peer is performing "hot-potato" routing, then the terminating peer typically has a higher cost burden as it has to transport the traffic the greater distance. However the opposite holds true if the originating peer is performing "cold-potato" routing. Thus, such things exist as traffic in/out ratios between peers. But this is a blunt tool which seems to help enforce the exclusivity of the Tier-1 club, and actually acts as a barrier to competition. That is, anybody with a different traffic pattern (i.e., because of a different business model) will be excluded from the club despite the fact that they bring equal value in the form of traffic volume to the relationship. And club-outsiders are subject to increased relative operating costs (cost of revenue) compared to club-insiders. So what is the solution? "Warm-potato" routing seems possible technically, providing an approximation of cost-burden fairness. Is the benefit worth the complexity to manage in practice? And clearly, I'm not advocating endless open peering--the revenue element of the equation (customers) must exist. So what is the best way to determine the criteria by which a network is determined to be a "peer"? Cheers, -Benson --- Benson Schliesser (email) mailto:[email protected] I barely understand my own thoughts, much worse those of my betters. Thus, the opinions expressed herein are not necessarily those of my employer. Ponder them at your own risk.
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