Today's peering system is a perverse tax on innovation

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Th current peering structure evolved from an inter-governmental  
problem. When CSNet was coming up, we, CSNet and Darpa  wanted to  
interconnect. Due to regulations, it was difficult to just connect  
(not an FCC issue but a USG), so it was decided by NSF and Darpa that  
the flow was to be assumed to balance and thus  no monies needed to be  
interchanged.  While the Peering relationships got a lot more  
complicated in the commercial era, the assumption that there needed to  
be a contractual agreement with funds potentially being exchanged  
stayed. BTW the actual peering agreements, while I was at the FC ,  
were considered to be proprietary an were not available to the FCC

djf


Begin forwarded message:

From: "Bob Frankston" <bob2-39 () bobf frankston com>
Date: November 12, 2009 10:40:01 AM EST
To: <dave () farber net>, "'ip'" <ip () v2 listbox com>
Cc: <nnsquad () nnsquad org>
Subject: Today's peering system is a perverse tax on innovation

False dichotomies are very bad for policy no matter how pretty the  
pictures. Worse is when they demonstrate a naïve understanding of  
accounting by treating the artifacts of accounting and policy as if  
they were hard numbers. They also show little understanding of  
connectivity.

The peering system presumes we have very high ongoing costs – today  
the marginal costs of using the network a trivial. So why are we so  
very determined to deny ourselves the benefits of abundance? It seems  
to perverse and self-destructive. Can you imagine running your home  
network like telecom runs its and paying by the bit. It wouldn’t  
matter if the network was idle – you couldn’t afford to exchange large  
files.

The very idea of trying to amortize costs over bits which have a  
dynamic range of 12 or more orders of magnitude makes no sense. Think  
of all the fiber we run “just in case” and not light up. It’s so cheap  
we just do it. There is a complete disconnect between policy and  
reality and we’re all the poorer for it!

I remember visiting ATT’s network operations center in Bedminster and  
it was a sight to behold – a huge space with huge displays and  
blinking lights. When a light would blink red people were supposed to  
scramble to … to what? I presume make a deal like on any trading room  
floor. I realized it wasn’t about networking. It was more a trading  
floor in scarcity futures. It was about monetizing their network no  
matter what the collateral damage to the economy and our society. The  
bits themselves would simply flow through any available path. The  
purpose of the peering system is to limit the flow so that each bit  
can carry a price tag no matter the harm.

Nearly a century ago Ted Vail argued for a single system which avoided  
all these problems. Back then one could claim that the only way to do  
this was by having a single company own it all. Today we understand  
bits are fungible – we can create a single system, the bit commons, by  
moving beyond a long-outdated idea of a peering system modeled on 19th  
century railroads.

What makes this even more perverse is that the players all have deep  
conflicts of interest – antitrust should put an end to this system.  
It’s hard to have a real debate when telecom can use its control to  
force its way into the middle of relationship. I applaud Google’s  
willingness to take a stance.

-----Original Message-----
From: David Farber [mailto:dave () farber net]
Sent: Thursday, November 12, 2009 02:47
To: ip
Subject: [IP] FCC NPRM ban on Paid Peering harms new innovators

An interesting article for learning re Peering djf

Begin forwarded message:

From: George Ou <George.Ou () digitalsociety org>
Date: November 10, 2009 8:50:32 PM EST
Subject: FCC NPRM ban on Paid Peering harms new innovators

FCC NPRM ban on Paid Peering harms new innovators
The current FCC NPRM would prohibit paid peering agreements and harm  
small content providers

 http://www.digitalsociety.org/2009/11/fcc-nprm-ban-on-paid-peering-harms-new-innovators/

George Ou
www.DigitalSociety.org
202-360-4964 Direct
408-338-5848 Mobile




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