Re: cogent+ Level(3) are ok now

["Patrick W. Gilmore" <patrick () ianai net>]

On Nov 1, 2005, at 7:53 AM, John Curran wrote:

> At 12:27 PM +0000 11/1/05, Stephen J. Wilcox wrote:
> > Hi John,
> >
> > > Even with cold-potato routing, there is an expense in handling  
> > > increased
> > > levels of traffic that is destined for your network.  This  
> > > increase in traffic
> > > often has no new revenue associated with it, because it is  
> > > fanning out to
> > > thousands of flat-rate consumer/small-business connections (e.g.  
> > > DSL)
> > > where billing is generally by peak capacity not usage.
> >
> > not true for cogent tho, we know that virtually all their traffic  
> > is usage based
> > transit customers
>
> The traffic from Cogent creates additional infrastructure  
> requirements on L3.
> L3 may (or may not) be able to recover these costs as incremental  
> revenue
> from the recipients, depending on the particulars of their  
> agreements.  One
> way of mitigating their exposure is to set an upper bound on  
> uncompensated
> inbound traffic.
>
> Mind you, this is entirely hypothetical, as specifics of the Cogent/ 
> L3 agreement
> are not available.   However, it is one way to let everyone "bill  
> and keep" for
> Internet traffic without an unlimited exposure, and it is an  
> approach that has
> been used successfully in the past.

Taking L3 & Cogent completely out of this discussion, I'm not sure I  
agree with your assessment.

I think everyone agrees that unbalanced ratios can create a situation  
where one side pays more than the other.  However, assuming something  
can be used to keep the costs equal (e.g. cold-potato?), I do not see  
how one network can tell another: "You can't send me what my  
customers are requesting of you."

If your business model is to provide flat-rate access, it is not _my_  
responsibility to ensure your customers do not use more access than  
your flat-rate can compensate you to deliver.

--
TTFN,
patrick