Re: net neutrality and peering wars continue

[Niels Bakker <niels=nanog () bakker net>]

* woody () pch net (Bill Woodcock) [Thu 20 Jun 2013, 16:59 CEST]:
> On Jun 20, 2013, at 5:37 AM, Benson Schliesser <bensons () queuefull net> wrote:

> > Right. By "sending peer" I meant the network transmitting a 
> > packet, unidirectional flow, or other aggregate of traffic into 
> > another network. I'm not assuming anything about whether they are 
> > offering "content" or something else - I think it would be better 
> > to talk about peering fairness at the network layer, rather than 
> > the business / service layer.
> In that case, it's essentially never an issue, since essentially 
> every packet in one direction is balanced by a packet in the other 
> direction, so rotational symmetry takes care of the "fairness."

You're mistaken if you think that CDNs have equal number of packets 
going in and out.


> I think you may be taking your argument too far, though, since by 
> this logic, the sending and receiving networks also have control 
> over what they choose to transit and receive, and I think that 
> discounts too far the reality that it is in fact the _customers_ 
> that are making all of these decisions, and the networks are, in the 
> aggregate, inflexible in their need to service customers.  What a 
> customer will pay to do, a service provider will take money to 
> perform.  It's not really service providers (in aggregate) making 
> these decisions.  It's customers.

I think the point is here that networks are nudging these decisions by 
making certain services suck more than others by way of preferential 
network access.


        -- Niels.