RE: Favorites (Re: UUNET peering policy)

[Roeland Meyer <rmeyer () mhsc com>]

To top it all off, it is not all that clear that AboveNet has no retail
transit feeds. I personally know of a few ISPs using AboveNet facilities.
They re-sell Covad DSL and bring the Covad feed into their AboveNet cage,
they re-route it up from there. Of course, they are also doing this with
ELI. The thing is that they use the AboveNet internet backbone and the Covad
telco backbone, in an AboveNet cage, to refer to the specific example.
AboveNet is not in the position to know, or care, they just sell the cage
and the internet backbone. Since Covad is also in SJC, and they only sell
telco backbone, they don't care either. The titular ISP, works the margins
(as always).

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Sean Donelan [mailto:sean () donelan com]
> Sent: Monday, January 15, 2001 10:37 AM
> To: nanog () merit edu
> Subject: Favorites (Re: UUNET peering policy)
>
>
>
> On Sun, 14 January 2001, Paul Vixie wrote:
> > sean () donelan com (Sean Donelan) writes:
> > > If you look at Abovenet's traffic graphs, you'll notice 
> Abovenet has a wide
> > > variety of traffic balances with different providers.  
> Some in Abovenet's
> > > favor (such as 3:1 with Sprint, 5:1 with Teleglobe) and 
> some in the other
> > > provider's favor (such as 1:3 with Exodus).  ...
> >
> > "Favor"?  What, precisely, connotes "favor" in this regard? 
>  Sending more, or
> > receiving more?  And: why?
>
> Which side of the debate do you want to take?
>
>
> The traditional arguement is a network composed mostly of a 
> few large data
> centers, with lots of servers sending traffic is getting a 
> "free ride" on
> the network which built out nationwide and has POPs in every LATA.
>
> UUNET deserves a return on its investment on all those 
> wholesale dialup
> POPs and circuits to underserved rural areas.  Abovenet is just cream
> skimming in a few large metro areas, while UUNET does the hard work of
> carrying that extra traffic imbalance.  Abovenet selling 
> "cheap" bandwidth
> because it doesn't have the cost of delievering the traffic that UUNET
> has to pay.
>
> The opposite side is Abovenet has invested a lot into its 
> sites and MFN
> into its networks.  It just choose to do it in a different 
> way than UUNET.
> Its more expensive to lay fiber in metro areas than rural 
> areas.  It costs
> a lot of money to operate the centers.  Whether the traffic 
> is being paid
> by the millions of $19.95 dialup users on UUNET's wholesale ports or
> by the hundreds of hosters in Abovenet's sites, the traffic is paid.