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Re: Sprint v. Cogent, some clarity & facts

  • From: Patrick W. Gilmore
  • Date: Mon Nov 03 10:40:54 2008
On Nov 3, 2008, at 10:03 AM, David Schwartz wrote:
Patrick W. Gilmore wrote:

4. There is a reason behind ratios which has nothing to do with telco
"sender-pays"

There is an alleged reason.

Peering rations were first 'big news' when BBN wanted to de-peer Above.Net, Global Center, and Exodus in 1998. I spent a long time chatting with BBN's CTO about why BBN wanted to do this. I am convinced the facts are correct.

Perhaps more importantly, anyone who understands how BGP, fiber, routers, etc. work can figure this out for themselves without even talking to another network. Put another way, this is not a fantasy, supposition, bluster, etc.

What do you have to convince people otherwise?


Hot potato routing + very poor ratios puts much more of the cost on
the receiving network.  This is a valid, logical, and costly concern
for receiving networks.

So what? So the argument is:

1) Your customers want to receive from my customers.

2) Receiving is more expensive.

3) Therefore you should pay me?

I don't remember saying that at all. Perhaps you should re-read my post.


I want to send, and sending is cheap. Your customers want to do the
expensive receiving, not mine. My customers want to do the cheap sending.

The ratio argument is nonsense. If your customers want to receive mostly,
and receiving is expensive, they should pay you more to cover your higher
costs in receiving traffic. If my customers mostly want to send, and sending
is cheap, then I should pay less, since I want to do the cheap thing and you
want to do the expensive thing.

The ratio argument is not nonsense. And fortunately, what you spout on NANOG has no effect on reality.


Your customers pay you to carry their traffic across your network between
them and the next network in the line. There is no reason anyone else should
compensate you for doing this.


<eyeball-network advocate>
Your customers pay you to deliver their traffic to my eyeballs. There is no reason I should compensate you for doing so.
</advocate>

The FACT is that a point-source sending traffic to distributed receivers combined with hot-potato routing puts more of the cost on the receiver. That fact is not in dispute, apparently even you agree.

From that fact, you can argue whether that is grounds for de-peering, settlements, etc. But the fact stands.

Also, please note no one is forcing you to pay anyone. Cogent decided not to pay. There is no law forcing them, Sprint is not holding a gun to Dave's head. But just like no one is forcing the sender to pay, no one is forcing the receiver to pay either.


Personally I think business problems have a business solution. For the ratio problems in 1998, Above.Net (and others, probably), agreed to carry the traffic and deliver it closer to BBN's eyeballs, thereby shifting the majority of the cost to AN. Dave (Rand this time, not Schaeffer) actually preferred it that way, saying he trusted his network more than BBN's and AN's customers pay him for quality. Hrmm, sounds like just the opposite of how you treat your customer's traffic....

--
TTFN,
patrick