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Australia Investigates Peering Practices

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the peer-pressure dept.

Anonymous Sniper writes "The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission today announced that it will hold a public inquiry into whether an Internet interconnection [peering] service should be regulated. This would mean the big National ISPs would have to pay smaller ISPs for traffic originating within their networks, which means everyone's routing tables would become more efficient, and cheaper for the smaller ISPs. This would also set a significant international precedent. Horray for the ACCC and Allan Fels - the same people who made Region-Free DVD players legal here."

3 of 177 comments (clear)

  1. Good thing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Anything that goes to help out the smaller guys is a good thing. After all, the big guys gobble the little ones up, and then give crappy service for an ever increasing price.

    Perhaps this will let these beloved little IPSs survive just a little bit longer.

    Anything to keep the internet how it should be is a good idea, and it is nice to see the Aussie gov't protecting capitolism by leveling the playing field. After all, more compeition = better experience for every consumer.

  2. Old issue! Remember Africa? by npendleton · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Remember the slashdot story on African ISPs having to foot the connection bill? The fundamental problem is that peripheral networks foot the bill to connect to larger networks, which foot the bill to connect to themselves (via backbones) and which connect to yet larger networks.

    So why should governments regulate this? What kind of abuse is going on? If the edge players did not buy the connection, they would die.

    Large players (e.g. AOL and MCI) are the ones vulnerable to bankruptcy for spending too heavily on infrastructure, that is quickly out of date.

    Mac Refugee, paper MCSE, linux wanna be

  3. What happened to BGP? by umofomia · · Score: 5, Interesting
    There are some apparent curiosities with current interconnection arrangements. If I am connected to a smaller ISP and I send an email to my friend at one of the four larger ISPs, the larger ISP will generally charge my smaller ISP for sending the email. However, when my friend at the larger ISP sends me a return email, my smaller ISP will have to pay the larger ISP once again.
    Umm... this was the way BGP (Border Gateway Protocol: the protocol that basically routes the entire Internet, more info here) was designed to work. It's what gives ISPs incentive to cooperate yet still compete with one another. I don't see how the Australian government can do anything to change this since under BGP, there is no incentive to charge depending on which way information is flowing.

    BGP already provides some of these benefits for smaller ISPs by allowing peering relationships. Let's say there is a parent ISP A, with smaller ISPs B and C in a transit relationship to A (in other words, they pay A). If B wants to send to C, it normally has to go through A, and both B and C end up paying for it. If there is significant traffic between B and C, they may decide to set up a peering relationship, sending packets directly between one another and bypassing A. Many peering relationships are set up such that B and C don't pay each other anything, since they both end up saving money by bypassing A.

    Also, if you think about it, if A charges B for anything going from B to A and B charges A for anything going from A to B, you end up cancelling much of the money they make from one another. Granted, the larger ISP will most likely come out ahead, but it still needs to pay its bills. So it raise prices anyway in order to recoup the money that was cancelled out. In effect, the amount that the larger ISP charges will be unchanged, but there is extra work involved in keeping track of all this information. To make an analogy, does it make sense for you to charge your ISP for packets that go one way and not the other? No, you're paying them for the connection that they provide.

    Finally, how do we determine in what situations do charges apply? If an e-mail goes from A to B, it seems logical that A should pay. But if B makes a request for a web page and the web page is transferred from A to B, should A still pay? If we make different payment rules for different protocols, this will become a mess.

    In summary, I don't see how this regulation will effect anything except to make everyones lives harder.