nanog mailing list archives

Re: peering wars revisited? PSI vs Exodus


From: "Dustin Goodwin" <dustin () clickthings com>
Date: Tue, 4 Apr 2000 09:33:29 -0400


From the consumer perspective.

Of course the one piece of information (peering status and utilization) that
would be good indicator of capacity of a ISP is always held as confidential.
Thank god people work around the rules to let customers and perspective
customers know the truth about peering status. Personally I am ready for
government to step in and force public reporting of peering capacity and
utilization. Gordon keep doing what you do. There is large group nanog and
Cook report readers that depend on you for to get facts as opposed to the
glossy marketing version of facts.

- Dustin -
----- Original Message -----
From: "Gordon Cook" <cook () cookreport com>
To: "Paul Ferguson" <ferguson () cisco com>
Cc: <nanog () merit edu>
Sent: Tuesday, April 04, 2000 12:15 AM
Subject: Re: peering wars revisited? PSI vs Exodus



Hi Paul

1.  I am doing what press is HERE to do.  *INFORM*

2.  I am sure you can figure out that this was sent to me by an
affected party who wanted it leaked.

3.  This concerns the ability of a publicly traded company to give
its customers adequate service on the Internet.

4.  Exodus certainly had to tell its content providers that they were
gong to face problems in getting to somewhere between 5 and 10% of
the Internet.

5. But Exodus was also embarrassed by the deterioration in its
service that it was allowing to be inflicted on its customers. So
Exodus, in an attempt to limit the damage,  marked the email
"customer confidential communication."

6.  I am NOT an Exodus customer!  And since I am press I have a
personally reasonable  obligation, should I choose to exercise it, to
inform people that some important peering links have been broken.

7.  Exodus has a problem. In marking that customer confidential it
appears to me that it was trying to cover up its own problem and I
imagine in doing so it was making some already upset customers
further upset.

8. The sender of the message quite explicitly said I hope the press
covers this.  Therefore there was not a shred of doubt as to his
intent.

In my opinion, if someone chooses to leak it to me, except for my
relationship to the leaker, I have no obligation to exodus or anyone
else.  My default mode of operation has always been to keep the
identity of the leaker CONFIDENTIAL.  It is a subject of interest to
me and I think to list readers. I have been around for a LONG time
Paul, and while I must say that I respect you and your contributions
to this industry, I also must say that here your accusations miss the
mark.




At 10:15 PM 04/03/2000 -0400, Alex Rubenstein wrote:

Because one party -- the originator -- marks an electronic
communique as a
confidential communication, does that really require the
reciever to keep
it confidential?

Professional courtesy.

No,  I have no obligation of professional courtesy to exodus what so ever



Hmm, I forgot to put the sentence in about 'how it would be ethical for
people to honor it.'...

Fortunately, there are still quite a few folks who still honor
professional & personal ethics. Unfortunately, there are many
who do not.

Paul, sorry, you put this in entirely inappropriate clothing....see
my points above.



- paul


A bit later Paul added

For the masses, now:

It is the forwarding of "private" or "confidential" e-mails that
I find offensive, not the information or content.

- paul

My apologies Paul for perhaps not making the provenance of the
message CRYSTAL clear as I have tried to do above.

I was NOT a confidential message **TO ME**.

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