I realize that there has to be a limit how far down the economic /
business analysis we go.
Among other things, we need to start by coming up with ideas, without
regard to such limits.
But when it comes to deployment analysis, ignoring the question of who
pays, and why, is just not going to work. We don't need (don't want,
and can't) to mandate a business model. I would hope that a sensible
recommendation allows for multiple business models. But if we can not
even imagine one that works, then it fails.
And with regard to wanting more traffic, operators only want more
traffic if they are going to get paid for it. That does suggest a path
for deployment of PTRs. If they are deployed by folks at the who are
paid for transit on a volume basis, and who do not pay for transit, then
there may be enough incentives to pay for the extra cost of the traffic.
But for most ISPs (who get paid for traffic and pay for traffic), and
particularly for ISPs who send and receive most traffic over either free
peerings or pay for transit) it would be difficult. (Such ISPs could at
least provide PTRs for their own customers if they wished, once there
was some reason to do so.)
The basic pain point to avoid is dragging in traffic, which does not
have money attached, and then having to deliver it a way that doesn't
have money attached. Bandwidth and routers are not free.
Yours,
Joel
David Meyer wrote:
On Thu, Mar 20, 2008 at 09:54:19AM -0400, Joel M. Halpern wrote:
I would have to disagree with the description below.
Dino Farinacci wrote:
Have you thought more about this now, and can you say something about it
on the list?
It's the same answer I said when I was standing up at RRG. Providers
will do whatever they can to attract traffic. They typically don't want
to say no. The more traffic they attract the more peering they can get.
And the business opportunities start from there.
Dino
When geographic addressing (for v6, or even for v4) was proposed, one of
the big issues, brought forward by the providers, was that it would
require the provider to accept traffic for any customer in the
geographic region, and deliver it. This was unacceptable. It costs
money to have infrastructure to handle packets. And no one was / is
paying for that infrastructure.
Joel, that may have been a small part if it. But the
larger reality was that geo/metro would have required a
central authority and the fear was that such an
arrangement would subject the settlement free bilateral
arrangements that have really powered the growth of the
internet to regulation. That was the main pushback. It
really had little to do with attacting traffic. Vince
Fuller can add any level of detatil you like on these
points.
That said, no one wants work they are not being paid for,
but I can tell you from experience that the more traffic
an ISP can get from peers, the better (of course transit
is the best kind of (non-SMS) traffic, because it
typically has the most favorable margins [given the OSRs
in the design of most pops I've seen or worked on]).
This seems to me to be exactly the same issue as for PTRs as proposed.
There may be a way to deploy PTRs that gets them paid for, but I don't
know what it is.
Again, business models in scope?
Ignoring economic issues is a recipe for failure. If no one can afford
to deploy the solution if it catches on, then they will avoid doing so.
(Yes, anyone can afford PTRs in the early stage. That's not the
question.)
Uh, the IETF does precisely that, AFAIK. But if you want
to take that on, do you really feel that this group is
qualified to talk about ISP business models? As I said in
a previous email, analyzing and documenting the cost
distribution imposed by a given architecture is a good
thing (tm), and would seem appropriate for this
group. Speculating on what a given ISP might do with its
particular business model seems at best ill-advised. That
is especially true given the fact that I would suspect
that very few of the folks who are involved in this
thread have ever run a network of any scale, much less
dealt with the biz people behind those networks.
And no, operators don't want to attract traffic. They may want peering
relationships (not all want them.)
Joel, sorry, but this characterization is, to the best of
my understanding and experience, just wrong. And ISPs
only want peering to the extent they can't sell transit
to downstreams or to the extent that they themselves can
bypass upstream transit providers (like what you see with
google and yahoo, or in the developing world these days,
but this is an old story).
As Peter sarcastically but
accurately put it at the mike, they want to be paid for traffic, but
they don't actually want the traffic.
As you point out, Peter was being sarcastic. He wants to
build the biggerst network on the planet, and that means
the network that attracts the most traffic. Same was true
for UUNET back in the day (ask Vijay), or Verio (ask
Andrew or heas), or Sprint, or ... It was all about
getting traffic.
Dave
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