Re: Chinese bgp metering story

[Steven Bellovin <smb () cs columbia edu>]

On Dec 18, 2009, at 1:47 PM, Fred Baker wrote:

> On Dec 18, 2009, at 10:32 AM, Steven Bellovin wrote:
>
> > Could you post a summary, in appropriate technical terms, of precisely what is being requested, and what changes to 
> > BGP they want?
>
> Really.
>
> I can read tea leaves with the best of them, and the tea leaves I see tell me the reporter (in the story the blog 
> points to) doesn't have a clue. What is the substance of the proposal?
>
> Depending on objectives, I would expect that this means that China wants to look at routers (which run BGP), and
>
> (a) use IPFIX-or-something to measure traffic rates and charge for trans-China transit,
> (b) use interface statistics to measure traffic rates and charge for trans-China transit,
> (c) tax Chinese ISPs for transit services they provide, or maybe
> (d) use IPFIX-or-something to map communication patterns.
>
> It would be (d) that the reporter might seriously want to worry about.
>
> But what is all this about "is the ITU interested in changing BGP"? If the word "metering" makes any sense in 
> context, BGP doesn't meter anything.
Or using BGP to carry charging information, so that ISPs could use that in their policies?  Or charging end-to-end, 
rather than for transit?


                --Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb