Disputes Over Peering Arrangments Could Splinter The Internet
from the gated-communities... dept
A recent battle between AOL and Cogent may indicate the direction that AOL is trying to move in. AOL abruptly decided that Cogent Communications no longer qualified as a "peer" and, thus, could no longer directly connect to their network without paying $75,000/month. When Cogent refused, AOL cut them off, making for very slow connections for anyone using Cogent's network to access AOL content or vice versa. The theory is that AOL was using this as a test-case to start turning their "peering arrangements" into a profit center. The article points out that there's potential for huge future problems if this continues. If the various companies that hold the internet together suddenly decide that they won't connect to each other any more, the internet could splinter.
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The Wild West Analogy
In the early stages, the Wild West was a vast open land. As it developed, the revolutionary invention of barbed wire turned it less open, and people came to value the notion of "private property" more than ever. Barbed wire stopped valuable assets from flowing out, and kept intruders from coming in.
So it is with the internet. If we turn into a confederacy of proprietary networks, net security will become less of a problem. If we start charging people for sending email across networks, accepting only those with verified payments, that could do a lot to kill the spam industry.
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Re: The Wild West Analogy
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wildwest analogy doesn t work
Might be useless:
Telecom analogy: least cost routing. Cogent might be better off to find a AOL peer charging less then 75,000 and save money and hurt AOL bottom line. Least Cost Routing changed the organized telecom world, imagine it in the Internet.
Forgot, American Telecoms always refused to treat non American telcos as peer. So other telcos had to pay traffic all the way to the Us and into US networks, that s why many foreign telcos started buying into US telco assets, and started building regional and national huns.
Least cost routing !
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Re: The Wild West Analogy
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