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How Networks Interact — Peering and Transit Explained
Raindeer writes to share his article about peering and transit between networks, which begins:
"In 2005, AT&T CEO Ed Whitacre famously told BusinessWeek, 'What they [Google, Vonage, and others] would like to do is to use my pipes free. But I ain't going to let them do that...Why should they be allowed to use my pipes?'
The story of how the Internet is structured economically is not so much a story about net neutrality, but rather it's a story about how ISPs actually do use AT&T's pipes for free, and about why AT&T actually wants them to do so. These inter-ISP sharing arrangements are known as 'peering' or 'transit,' and they are the two mechanisms that underlie the interconnection of networks that form the Internet. In this article, I'll take a look at the economics of peering and transit in order to give you a better sense of how traffic flows from point A to point B on the Internet, and how it does so mostly without problems, despite the fact that the Internet is a patchwork quilt of networks run by companies, schools, and governments."
These inter-ISP sharing arrangements are known as 'peering' or 'transit,'
This makes it sound like 'peering' and 'transit' mean the same thing, and cover all traffic-sharing agreements. To my knowledge, that's not the case (and wikipedia agrees: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peering).
There are three types of relationships. In one, called peering, A and B accept traffic from each other and don't exchange money. In the two other, A accepts traffic and money from B, while B accepts traffic from A. From B's point of view, that's called transit, while from A's point of view it's called customer.
(I hope at least some of you learned something you didn't know already. Otherwise, I've wasted the interpipe transit peering capacity).
Sorry for the self-reply. The bit I commented on was taken from the article, so the title of my post should of course have been "Article Clarification".
This time, it's not only the slashdot editors that are lame ;)
Come on, at least the teaser.
At least the cellphone carriers only overcharge *one* end of the conversation for airtime. These beggers are arguing that they should get to charge BOTH ends the full price of the traffic.
I had always assumed that everyone paid for their interconnects, upstream and downstream, and thus the pipes were paid for.
In "peering" as described in the article. Does that mean the cost and monthly fees for the physical interconnect are free or does "peering" mean only the capacity used is free, but someone still pays for the physical plant.
..the public paid for over and over and over again way back when, plus later on they (that company and others) got shedloads more cash to upgrade those pipes, yet failed to do so, to the tune of 200 billion bucks. As in further, why aren't a lot of fatcats in jail yet for fraud? In true let it all hang out slashdot fashion, fuck those assholes. The "pipes" everywhere, leading from the smallest house to the big cross continental lines, should be taken back to public ownership and run as a commons or public co-op type deal, like the interstate road system is, or municipal water supply, or the public post office. charge a simple flat fee that pays for costs, then a little more, and it goes to improving and extending the networks, and get the private profit part out of the picture completely. I've had both a community telco experience and then be forced to use one of the old bells, no comparison, much better service and cheaper rates with the community telco model. And I certainly remember the olden days when those jerks got given a monopoly and abused it for decades. Screw 'em, they have proven to be greedy fucks forever, eminent domain seize the pipes and be done with it, then see to sticking some of those Cxx goons in jail for fraud, and make those "shareholders" in those asshole companies pay back the full 200 billion they stole, based on an exact proportion shares they hold and their part of that 200 billion dollars ripped off from the public. Fucking thieves. And then that would be lesson to other greedy companies and "stockholders" in the future if they are granted a pretty nice slice of some big public service pie and fail to do anything with it but rape it into the ground and screw everyone over.
if AT&T decides to be an ass, it's beneficial for the big players to just avoid AT&T and call their bluff. You can't sell bandwidth that doesn't go anywhere, and AT&T is hoping that companies will just roll over and not realize that they add value.
Seems like the kind of thing Google would be liable to do... teach the ISPs a lesson and whatnot. If Google just avoided AT&T's network for a day, I guarantee that concessions would be made.
Bandwidth is already purchased at both ends - Slashdot pays for bandwidth, I pay for bandwidth, and it works. AT&T can't triple-dip.
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...is a fundamental conflict of interest.
When AT&T said "What they [Google, Vonage, and others] would like to do is to use my pipes free.", they meant "What they [Google --content provider--, Vonage --service provider--, and others --various providers--] would like to do is to use my [AT&T -- connection provider & content provider -- ] pipes free.
Now, if AT&T separated the connection service from the content, I think we could put a fair and equitable system in place. But as long as AT&T co-mingles the connection service (i.e. infrastructure) with any other service they provide they will never find it in their interest to give competitors equal access to the connection. This is easy enough to predict. Simply look at the current state of DSL providers that have to use AT&T's wires. They are practically non-existent. If AT&T is unwilling to allow connection competition and have the ability to avoid it, obviously they will be equally unwilling to allow search engine competition or digital TV competition or any other service they choose to get into or provide via partner arrangements.
I am no fan of increased government regulation, but if we end up with non net neutrality then we absolutely need government regulation that will set standard fees for network service costs to be paid to the infrastructure provider AND AT&T (and Comcast and DirecPC and everyone else) must be forced to separate the infrastructure business from the service business.
As an aside, I think the FCC should also require an accounting for the high speed infrastructure that AT&T and others promised when they gladly took advantage of the incentives they were given to build such an infrastructure and then never did. Had they kept their promise, it's likely we would not have the "PtP problem" (if it even exists) they are using to push the tiered internet idea.
The NSA: The only part of the US government that actually listens.
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What are you talking about? In the US, cellular users pay for both incoming AND outgoing calls/messages/whatever.
Sounds like Mr. Raindeer has never been the innocent victim of a peering dispute. I have. Sure, the system mostly works, but it's hardly a socialist's or open-sourcer's dream.
Your last statement implies that they are double dipping, but I'm not sure they are. Say I have a packet from a customer of AT&T to a customer of Qualcom (both are Teer 1 I believe). AT&T will charge its customer once and Qualcom might even charge its, but that's only one dip each. (I'm not sure if transit arrangements typically charge for downstream traffic so I'm not sure Qualcom would be charing for it.)
At least the cellphone carriers only overcharge *one* end of the conversation for airtime
Is that why I pay for my incoming SMS and calls? ;)
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Not in the US. Both ends pay full price for a cellphone call.
Which is retarded, because land-line service has NEVER worked that way in the US and cell service has NEVER worked that way ANYWHERE ELSE IN THE WORLD, but hey, it's the modern US, profit uber alles. And I'd spell that right if Slashdot understood that the world was more than just the US.
As long customers are paying AT&T to connect to "The Internet," then AT&T can't win this game, and content providers should call its bluff.
But if customers are paying AT&T to connect to "AT&T Net," as people used to pay AOL, and "AT&T Net" has content that is an adequate, if inferior, substitute for Internet content, then even if customers really want You Tube, AT&T will be able to get You Tube to pay for access to their customers, and AT&T will cut in the middleman and pass the costs on to you and me.
What can stop this from happening? Continuing use of an open protocol like TCP/IP and competition in last-mile connectivity. AOL went down because there stopped being anything you could get from it that you couldn't get from a $15/month dialup connection from UUNet. Now that everyone is moving from phone lines to cable, providers see a chance to reestablish these kinds of monopolies. Since the FCC doesn't seem to see a problem with this, and has allowed DSL competition to die, our last hope is that cell phone providers don't realize that they too could be content providers before they end up in open conflict with wired broadband providers over the connectivity market. I am not hopeful.
Is that why I pay for my incoming SMS and calls? ;)
It's why I don't pay for calling you if you have a cellphone and I don't. And why I don't pay more for RECEIVING a call from a cellphone. Or, when YOU'RE calling a cellphone, it doesn't cost you twice as much as if you're calling a landline phone.
They want to do the equivalent of charging people calling you for your airtime, and charging you for your airtime as well. If you do the equivalent of making a call from a cellphone to another cellphone, they want to charge you twice.
In my weblog I've written an article about Big ISP, little ISP, local internet exchanges about what little ISPs can gain if transit ISPs join the local internet exchanges. Short version: the transmit ISPs can end up delivering your traffic much faster than what you pay for, but (of course) it is possible for the transmit ISPs to overcome this "problem" if they design their network properly.
bash$
But they don't charge the guy on the other end of the call airtime as well. What these guys are talking about amounts to charging BOTH ends of EVERY cellular call, no matter who made it, ALL the airtime charges.
Telstra provides the pipe leases to all the ISP's.. at stupidly high rates, resulting in those annoying (explative deleted)s which invade every slashdot thread talking about how "awesome" regressing back 2 decades to metered internet is.
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'What they [Google, Vonage, and others] would like to do is to use my pipes free. But I ain't going to let them do that..
This guy is stealing "water" from Google, Vonage and many others in order to sell his otherwise unuseful pipes.
In my humble opinion he's so hypocrite that he should be shot dead for being such a axxxole.
What are you talking about? In the US, cellular users pay for both incoming AND outgoing calls/messages/whatever.
Wrong. US Cellular does not charge for incoming cell calls.
You have a shitty provider.
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
aving the unfortunate experience of working for AT&T in the past I have to say a few things. First, this is not an unusual move for them. Standard ops for them seem to be finding ways to screw both the customers and their employees. Second, (and I'm not up on the full technical way things work) is that this looks like the basics on how phone lines work as well. It would make sense considering that the net was originally distributed across the phone network. If I'm correct then the same regulations that govern the fair use and billing practices should apply to both. Users at both ends are paying to connect to their provider and those providers have agreements with other providers to use each others networks to complete the connection between their customers. Hell some providers may even "lease" lines from AT&T. A good part of MCI's network was leased back in the day; I know this for a fact as I had to deal with the collection of funds when MCI went through bankruptcy. So basically it's posturing by someone at AT&T trying to impress the board and shareholders by telling them they have come up with a new way to milk people for money. Legal, ethical, until they actually attempt to charge its just posturing.
That really sucks about USA cell phone contracts. Here in Germany we only pay for making the calls. The receiving end doesn't get charged at all.
If I bought a pre-paid phone with no contract, I could put like 5 on it and keep it that way for around 6 months without putting anymore money on it, and I wouldn't have to pay anything more even though I could be receiving 10 hour-long calls a day and receiving hundreds of SMS messages.
Here in Germany we only pay for making the calls
Yeah and your friends all pay extra for the privilege of calling your mobile number..... at least in all of the European countries I've ever been in. It was one rate to call landline numbers (from your own landline or cell) -- another rate to call mobile numbers.
For better or worse in the United States (Canada as well?) it's the mobile user that pays extra for the privilege of having that mobility.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
You are misunderstanding. What the ISPs want to do, would be the equivalent of this:
You (on Sprint) call me (on Cingular). Both Sprint and Cingular charge you full price for the call, then both Sprint and Cingular charge me full price for the call, despite you not having a contract with Cingular, and me not having a contract with Sprint, becasue in theory we both were using parts of both of their networks.
Why does it charge money then?
Well, yes, because network traffic goes both ways, and Cisco routers are expensive.
If you think it's easy and cheap to be a tier 1 carrier, or that it makes more sense to only charge half your customers, then go get some VC or a business loan and give it a shot. I'll happily volunteer to be one of your non-paying customers.
If you think it's easy and cheap to be a tier 1 carrier,
Where did I say that? I didn't.
or that it makes more sense to only charge half your customers, [...]
They're not "only charging half their customers", though. They're getting paid for all their downstream connections. What they theoretically miss when they cross-charge for peering is paid for by their actual customers on their downstreams, or by reduced charges at other peering points.
Google pays for their traffic into and out of their POP. My ISP pays for traffic into and out of its POP. If AT&T's not getting paid directly by Google, they're getting paid (directly or indirectly) by whoever they peer with that handles Google's POP. There's no point where all the traffic isn't already being paid for by someone.
AT&T wants to charge Google directly, as well as charging Google's ISP. That's double-dipping, because they're already getting paid for that traffic.
Right, so, I foolishly assumed you read the article.
It has almost nothing to do with Google or AT&T, it's about the difference between ISPs and carriers, and the difference between peering and transit.
The "Tier 1" carriers charge the ISP on the client end of a connection, and they also charge the ISP on the server end on the connection. If you feel like traffic should only be charged in one direction (client pays or server pays, not both) then this seems like double-dipping. But the truth is that the core of the Internet is physically expensive to build and maintain, regardless of which direction the traffic is flowing, and both ISPs want to connect through the carrier. If they don't need the carrier's pipes, they won't pay for them.
The whole AT&T thing is an unusual example, because it's a company that is both carrier and ISP, but even the summary downplays the significance of that famous quote. AT&T will sell transit to anyone who is willing to pay for it, and they'll peer with anyone where it's in their interest to do so. They're doing this already, and the existence of Google doesn't fundamentally change the economics, except that it gives Google's ISP even more incentive to peer with other ISPs.
The "Tier 1" carriers charge the ISP on the client end of a connection, and they also charge the ISP on the server end on the connection.
I know. I already pointd that out myself. In the very message that you just responded to.
If you feel like traffic should only be charged in one direction
I didn't, however, say that.
I'm talking about the frequently raised argument that they should be able to charge Google (or whoever) again, via some kind of "guaranteed service" (without which they'll of course 'unguarantee' the service they're currently getting) on top of everything else.
And it's not just AT&T that have raised this.
Here in Germany we only pay for making the calls. The receiving end doesn't get charged at all.
So the caller gets overcharged for cellular calls, whichever end he's on. That's fine, it's overcharging a different person than in the US, but whatever...
Either way if I'm on a cellphone, and you're on a cellphone, and I call you... either I get charged for both sets of airtime (like in .de) or we each get charged for our own airtime (like in .us). But only one person pays for the airtime.
What AT&T seems to want to do is charge Google extra for being Google, even though Google is already "paying for their airtime".