Fw: Peering vs SFI (was Re: Cogent/Level 3 depeering)

[Michael.Dillon () btradianz com]

> Time to quote Geoff Huston one more time.
>
> "A true peer relationship is based on the supposition that either party 
> can terminate the interconnection relationship and that the other party 
> does not consider such an action a competitively hostile act. If one 
> party has a high reliance on the interconnection arrangement and the 
> other does not, then the most stable business outcome is that this 
> reliance is expressed in terms of a service contract with the other 
> party, and a provider/client relationship is established"

Those people less versed in the art of peering may
not understand why the peer who has been disconnected
does not consider the action to be competitively hostile.

Simply put, in a true peer relationship, the party who
terminates the interconnection is shooting themselves
in the foot and inflicting as much commercial pain on
themselves as they are inflicting on their peer. The
reason that it is not "competitively" hostile is because
it does not increase the ability of either peer to
compete. Rather, it damages both of them equally because
true peers are equals to begin with.

As vijay points out, this whole issue is not really about
true peering because such equality between peering partners
is rare. It's really about the business case for settlement
free interconnect and that is rather more complex than 
merely the choice between "free" traffic exchange and
paid transit.

--Michael Dillon

P.S. would the Internet be worse off if all traffic 
exchange was paid for and there was no settlement
free interconnect at all? I.e. paid peering, paid
full transit and paid partial transit on the menu?