Re: peering charges?

["Howard C. Berkowitz" <hcb () clark net>]

At 2:04 AM -0500 1/26/97, Eric D. Madison wrote:
> I don't think anyone has actually started charging "settlements" which is
> what your CEO is probably talking about.  It's been a rumor for quite a
> while that settlement based peering will happen.  Very similar to how the
> utilities companies manage "traffic".  You would count bits into your
> network from peer X and he would count bits from your network, whoever has
> the lowest number has to pay the difference.  So, if you are a small
> provider, your going to have to pay the big boys to carry your customers
> traffic.  Welcome to the new Internet, where the bottom line is the
> driving factor. Especially since the margins are so low and no-one has
> made any money yet (will we ever?).

A good reference on financial issues in peering models is
http://iepg.org/settlements.html, a paper by Geoff Huston.
> Since some of the larger vendors (Cisco mostly) has introduced accounting
> features into their software settlements could start any time.  It's just
> a matter of time until someone actually announces it..  who will jump
> first?   I have my guess but I don't think I want to announce it publicly.
> :)
>
> Eric

> On Sun, 26 Jan 1997, Dave Curado wrote:
>
> > Curious thing, the CEO of my company called me the other
> > day and was worried about who we were peering with.
> > It seems someone put a bug in his ear that the larger
> > providers were about to start charging some of the smaller
> > providers for bilateral peering.
> >
> > I haven't heard anything about that at all... so either
> > a) the ceo is mistaken
> > b) I've missed some important annoucement recently
> >
> > either is possible.
> >
> > Has anyone else heard anything about this?


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