Re: UUNET Press Release on Peering

[Vadim Antonov <avg () pluris com>]

On Mon, 12 May 1997, Christopher Morrell wrote:

> > Which of UUNET's peers who are able to continue to peer with them, would
> > you say do not follow the criteria set out in the press release?

> I know of at least one.  I'm sure there are more.  It seems,
> that equity in traffic exchange may be an overriding
> principle, although running many web-farms and small
> backbone can certainly give you that.

This is a serious misunderstanding of the economics of Internet.

The "equity in traffic" is not important at all.

What is important is equal share in carrying packet flows, which
can be approximately measured in miles*bps.  *That* costs money.

Therefore, a small ISP dumping most of its traffic to others at
one exchange point will cause long-haul backbones to carry its
traffic most of the distance (no matter which direction the traffic
goes), thus effectively subsidizing that small ISP.

--vadim
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