Re: Sprint peering policy

[Paul Vixie <paul () vix com>]

> What is the connection between unregulated peering and the financial
> difficulties we have seen?
>
> The problems have been caused by:
>
> - Bad business models
> - Greed
> - Corporate officers who have shirked their fudiciary responsibilities to
>   the stockholders
>
> If you can somehow tie peering into this, please be my guest, but it would
> be a bit of a stretch.

you've asked and answered your own question, though.  remember, wcom tried
to buy sprint and it was only the EU's antitrust folks who stopped them.

when peering was an engineering issue rather than a sales/equity/PR issue,
there was a lot of it, and there were fewer single points of failure at ISO-L8
than we see today.

i completely understand that acquisition is a common and valid means to grow
a business.  however, with closed peering as a way of life for our industry,
a lot of deals are done which only make money for the investment bankers and
don't actually "grow business".  closed peering is all about greed and not
about service levels, competitive pricing, or overall sector health.

closed peering is a bad business model.  it shirks fiduciary duty to long-term
equity holders in order to give periodic "quick hits" to short-term holders.
closed peering proceeds from a Highlander-like premise "there can be only one"
when in fact there could be many, and if there were many then the industry
overall would be healthier.