On Jan 31, 2014, at 1:29 PM, Matt Palmer <mpal...@hezmatt.org> wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 31, 2014 at 11:09:43AM -0500, John Curran wrote: >> better utilization. It would be nice if there was a way to fairly >> "settle up" for the imputed cost of adding a given route to the >> routing table, as this would provide some proportionate backpressure >> on growth, would create incentives for deaggregate cleanup, etc. >> We don't have such a system, so it falls to each ISP to decide what >> route is worth accepting based on type and the offering peer's >> business relationship... > > I almost hesitate to mention this, just in case I put ideas into some > beancounter's head, but it seems to me that the cost model of carrying > packets isn't that different to carrying routes. In both cases, practically > everyone is acting as a middleman, and money flows hither and yon and > (presumably) balances out in the end, with everyone having their costs > covered with a little left over for the shareholders. Meh, sort of… > > Imagine one of the big players saying, "we're going to charge you $X per > route you send to us" (just like transit agreements that state, "we will > charge you $X/GB of traffic"), or "your contract allows you to send us N > routes" (just like, "your contract allows you to send us N Gb of traffic"). > About 15 minutes later everyone else would start doing it, to recoup the > costs of sending routes to that provider. Peering would be considered not > only if the volume of traffic was mutually advantageous, but also if the > routes exchanged were mutually advantageous. That’s the optimistic outcome. The pessimistic outcome is that they get rapidly depeered by everyone unwilling to pay $X/GB and then start losing customers because their customers can no longer reach anyone else’s customers through them. The reality probably lies somewhere in between. I suspect whoever chooses to conduct this little experiment first should be prepared for substantial pain. YMMV. Owen