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Do 'Bandwidth Bullies' Abuse Their Positions?
Zannah writes "An article on Forbes' website talks about the 'bullies of the Internet': the few providers who dominate much of the internet backbone, and who charge -- rightly or wrongly -- smaller organizations for access and peering to the backbone. It raises the question og whether the Net really *is* as open and distributed as touted, or whether it's in fact dominated by monopolies. As someone who works for one of the mentioned 'bullies' (UUNET), I think it's a bit one-dimensional, but certainly worth reading." This articles raises some interesting points, especially for rural customers and ISPs. Of course, in much of the world it's far worse anyhow.
The rail analogy can be taken further. Rail companies regularily share traffic over their lines. The in most cases, empty cars are sent back to their origin in the exact reverse order they travelled to reach the destination.
This results in empty cars travelling less than optimal routes back to their origin. The purpose of all this is to ensure that the companies who profitted from moving the loaded car, pay for moving the empty.
I believe a similar business model is being applied here. The backbone providers share their loads more or less equally. The little guys have little to contribute in terms of large scale inter-connectivity so are out of the game. But a packet is a still a packet, it is never empty or full like a boxcar, all packets cost something to send and receive no matter how large or small the connectivity provider is.
This leads to an interesting possibility. The smaller providers could charge the Backbone companies for access to their customer base. The big providers won't find the smaller markets profitable, but as a group, the smaller providers would represent a good piece of traffic. Podunk may not count for much, but 10,000 Podunks might make a Chicago.
When I was pricing a T1 for my home I checked out uunet and the other carriers. Granted, I don't live too far from a hub, but UUnet's pricing wasn't too far above everyone elses (about $350 more than other local carriers once I got done negotiating).
Plus, they were the only company who guaranteed latencies in north america and transatlantic, as well as constant server monitoring and free paging for detected outages. That and a free days credit for 1 minute of downtime, whether on their end or the local loop.
I couldn't afford the price then, but when I can, they'll be the guys I go with. Yes they're more expensive. But you do get what you pay for.
Of course I use Microsoft. Setting up a stable unix network is no challenge
this got me thinking - why doesn't the government start building public "roads" for the internet with tax money? They've been doing it since cars were invented, in real life, so it should be a natural progression, right?
Just think what the world would be like if major companies owned all the main highways and freeways?
Hell, I don't think this'll actually happen anytime soon, but it's a thought.
when the rain comes, they run and hide their heads. they might as well be dead.
The Tier 1 backbone ISPs are today competing in a free market. No price regulation, and no monopolies. So the price is what the market will bear. "Peering" is done for mutual self interest. UUNET needs good access to Sprint's subscribers, and Sprint needs access to UUNET's, so they peer for free. That's how the handful of Tier 1s work -- it's in their mutual self interest.
Now you have little guys who have no content to speak of. So it means little to UUNET or Genuity to have good access to them. Yet they want free peering just like the big boys! Hey, I wish my house had free peering over a T3 too, but somebody has to pay for the Tier 1s! They <B>sell</B> backbone service to smaller ISPs. If it were free, where would the money come from? Repeat: This is a free market. The price is not set by the government, but by haggling until both sides' mutual self-interest is met. Not the way some Americans might be used to it, but the real world is full of bargaining. BTW, smaller backbone ISPs (Tier 2s, who almost by definition are the ones whose web sites call themselves "Tier 1", don't always pay a fixed price for Tier 1 upstreaming. They negotiate based on mutual self-interest. As they get bigger, they acquire leverage.)
Ditto to the smaller country players who whine about paying for bandwidth to US peering points. If they had content that the US providers though it was more vital to have, then they might split the cost.
Second, the Internet became commercialized when BBN (Bolt, Beranek and Newman) was created (if I remember correctly) specifically to sell NSFnet to. BBN was the first commercial backbone. Everybody else got blocks assigned by IANA and either built their own or leased from BBN. Nobody "chose" that format, it just grew that way.
I remember a few years ago the screaming when the big boys announced that they would begin refusing to peer with smaller networks. It makes sense if you think about it -- you have to draw a line somewhere. There comes a point below which you aren't big enough for big backbones like UUNet or AT&T to care if they lose all your traffic.
The flip side of this is, big sites like eBay or Yahoo have leverage because everybody wants access to them. There's opportunity for them to leverage their popularity into lower or no connection fees if they're savvy enough to manipulate it.
And really big sites like AOL are now backbones in their own right, to the point where magazines like BoardWatch rate AOL's network as a backbone provider.
-- Old Man Kensey