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The Internet

New UUNet Policy Offers No-charge Peering 50

Posted by Hemos from the good-way-to-change dept.
Sacrifice writes "For the last seven years, no new network has been able to peer with UUNet without paying for transit. This looks to change, as they now publicly offer, in clear, publicly stated terms, their requirements for bilateral (no tribute) peering! Genuity paved the way for this three months ago with the announcement of their own publicly stated peering requirements (Genuity had a difficult time years ago with achieving bilateral peering with UUNet, and was the last major network to manage it)." Update: 01/10 02:44 PM by J : TBTF has the one good explanation that I've seen.
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New UUNet Policy Offers No-charge Peering More

New UUNet Policy Offers No-charge Peering

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  • Hmm... if it's half-and-half, though... maybe they are the one. Didn't AOL pick up a big pile of modem banks and other ISP toys when they bought out Compuserve a few years back?

    No - they sold them all to Worldcom :) The deal was that AOL network services and Compuserve network services were farmed off to Worldcom and AOL took the compuserve client base and customer systems.

    As far as meeting this requirements go - I can think of a few European Telcos who have ISP operations that could meet the requirements through the ownership of subsidary operations across europe, BT probably, France Telecom as well. I know Energis have operations in several european countries. So theres probably a few out there.

  • Oh.. (Score:1)

    by deppe ( 27130 )
    I thought you ment free peeping. My mistake. I'll be quiet now.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Just another hacker exploit (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Correct me if I'm wrong (I'm not), but isn't this the UUNet that is world famous for SPAM and LAMERS? I thought that they had a UDP against them. And now, they go and do this. Wonderful- they're letting people 'peer' into their network. This will obviously just become another option for script kiddies to exploit. Us sysadmins go through years of training to SECURE systems, and now they go and let people peer into them. I bet they let people take files [geocities.com], too. Just like those piracy [wego.com]programs [napster.com], but worse. Doesn't the thought of someone peering at your hard drive make anyone else nervous?

    I suggest that we boycott UUNet [dal.net] immediately.

  • Peering Policy has always been there (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I know of a few companies that have been able to get private peering with UUnet over the last couple of years, however, part of the agreement is that they were NOT allowed to advertise the fact to anyone that they had it!

    You can figure out who by analyzing the RADB records.

    Just because you heard somewhere that UUNet hasn't done this in 7 years doesn't make it true. It just means the people who's networks were big enough to meet thier requirments were forbiden to discuss it.

  • Re:Peering (Score:3)

    by Brew Bird ( 59050 ) on Wednesday January 10, 2001 @02:30AM (#517558)
    At a physical level, peering connections look exactly like any other type of connection. The diffrence is in how it is configured. With peering, you only get the routes of the network you are connected to. So, if I am peered with Sprint, I only get Sprint routes, and Sprint's Customers routes. Thats all, nothing else.

    A little peering history. Your government mandated public peering points into existence to try and free up the market, to help get a little competition cooking. however, technology had a hard time keeping up with demand at these internet hot spots, and public peering points soon became a serious traffic loss area for the bigger networks. (After all, with every moe, dick and larry trying to funnel traffic down that DS3 or FDDI connection at the NAP, it soon filled up!) So anyone who seriously needed bandwidth to larger networks ended up privatly peering (your 2 shacks in the woods). Of course, private peering is a lot more expensive for both parties, so the larger networks eventualy relized that no-cost peering with the smaller networks was of little or no value to them. After all, if you are UUnet peering with Joe Small Rocks ISP, he gets free access to your 100k worth of customers, and you get access to his 10 customers!

    It basicly boiled down to giving away free service to smaller ISPs for no value in return, so the larger ISPs started coming up with a set of requirments to keep the smaller ISPs from wasting thier resources.

    Things like : Be at 5 public access peering points, have a presence in XX number of states, document XXXXMb of traffic between our networks for XXhours of uptime. In other words, make us understand how it is to our mutual advantage to peer. (after all, peering relationships shoule be among peers, not big network to little network)

    You are pretty much right, the almighty dollar rules here. But, that is as it should be. We don't want the Internet to become run on the same rules as a welfare state. I believe such rules would result in the least stable service for a relativly high amount of money.

    So, bottom line - if you want no-cost peering, have a big network with lots of customers! Plan on burning a lot of money up front to build a big network and even more money to BUY transit until you have enough customers you can meet the demands for private peering. Once you meet those demands, you will get it.
  • Things like : Be at 5 public access peering points, have a presence in XX number of states, document XXXXMb of traffic between our networks for XXhours of uptime. In other words, make us understand how it is to our mutual advantage to peer. (after all, peering relationships shoule be among peers, not big network to little network)

    You are pretty much right, the almighty dollar rules here. But, that is as it should be. We don't want the Internet to become run on the same rules as a welfare state. I believe such rules would result in the least stable service for a relativly high amount of money.

    The internet was designed so that all machines and networks could connect as peers. Services and information should be provided on request, so that all users can benifit.

    What you propose would turn the net into something more like the old push medias: Fragemented nets who's interconnects are controlled by giants interested only in pushing adverts onto your desktop. This is why you refer to users as "customers" and talk derisevely about smaller ISPs.

    The joke, of course, is on you. If greedheads like you get your way you will screw the pootch. If such monopoly nets are established and they hump people hard enough, they will be nationalized again. People will be able to argue that a natural monopoly exists and regulate it for the public good, and minimum public cost like the electric utilities. Next, the US supreme court can look at free speech issues like anonymous publishing and open it all up.

    The quality of information is not a linear function of network resources. UUNet with all of it's spam, is a prime example.

    My mod points gave me a really hard choice here. Mark you as a troll or answer your BS.

  • UUnet is more than just dial-in POPs. They have one of the largest backbones on the Internet (and they charge as if they were the largest too).

    UUnet has always done free peerings (between backbones -- nothing to do with dial-in POPs), it's just that there hasn't been an official policy made public until now and the last network they peered with was quite a while ago. It just means UUnet is picky who they peer with, and now their criteria is known publically.

    -B
  • Do their competitors actually make employees pay to go to the toilet or something?
    Huh...?
    Oh, peering, sorry, nevermind.


    ^. .^
    ( @ )

    Soylent Foods, Inc.
  • "
    To get to my servers in our London datacenter from a UUNet connection, it covers about 15 hops that include a trans-contenental hop to DC up to New York, back over AboveNet fiber to London again and response does the same path.
    "

    You think that's bad. We have two net connections, UUNet and INSnet. To get from UUNet's own traceroute tool to us they recommend the shortest route as down INSnet. This means we get asymmetric routing and we are virtually unable to use any of our incoming UUNet bandwidth.

  • > I have had an email address for 4 years now and I don't get spammed at all, why cause I don't plaster on every stupid webform I see.

    Eh? You obviously use a different Internet than mine.

    I've never given a valid email address to any company, nor have I ever typed it into a webform.

    I have, however, posted to USENET unmunged from 1992 to 1995. The spam started in 1994 and didn't start to go down until I "whined" to every spammer's upstream and started whacking the moles.

    >Who are you going to side with, the customer/spammer who pays you ten of thousands of dollars a year or more

    While I loathe the "mainsleaze" guys like TFSM and Spamazon and what-not, all of my spam comes from $19.95/month throwaway dialup accounts (and about 90% of it from uu.net dialups).

    Every time I report one of those whackamoles (well, until UUNET took over the spam business, because they just /dev/null abuse reports after sending me a uunet abuse ticket number lottery ticket), I'm costing that spammer's ISP money, because the abuse department has to read it, store it, and if enough complaints about a user are received, investigate and act on it. When it costs an ISP more than $19.99 a month to sell a spammer a dialup account, the spam will stop.

    Whether the spam stops because the ISP got a clue and (pick one or all of "stopped selling accounts to spammers", "blocked port 25 on new users", or "required credit card validation", or any other set of proactive measures), or because the ISP got blackholed a'la AGIS and ended up the world's biggest LAN, isn't my problem.

  • Last I checked, AOL *only* 'peers' at MAE East, and refuses to private-peer with anyone, with the possible exception of Exodus. So I doubt they'd wanna play ball with UUNet anyway. As the previous posters have pointed out, there's LOTS of players in the backbone game, and more every day. What I don't see happening is everyone tearing up the pay-for-packets peering ( correct term is transit) agreements they've already signed with other big backbone companies (including UUNet.) After all, writing a check to a company every month usually comes with an actionable SLA, and people kinda of like being able to call up the other provider's NOC whenever they want, because they're treated like a CUSTOMER in most cases. Besides, in most BGP configurations, private peerings or customer routers are given higher precedence (local pref), and no one wants to give that up, either.

  • If you have an open relay (like so many of the Exchange sites I've encountered), your mail server can be exploited. Period. Both Sendmail 8.11 and Exchange 5.5SP3 support SMTP AUTH. Turn it on and force your users to authenticate to the mail server as well as POP. They'll still be able to send their mail from the corporate server, but you'll at least have some protection against paying for someone else's advertising.


    Rev. Dr. Xenophon Fenderson, the Carbon(d)ated, KSC, DEATH, SubGenius, mhm21x16

  • A bunch of these articles seem to imply that UUnet has the largest Internet network around, but I was always under the impression that Cable and Wireless was the "biggest". So who has the largest network around? I'm curious. :)


    Rev. Dr. Xenophon Fenderson, the Carbon(d)ated, KSC, DEATH, SubGenius, mhm21x16
  • Does anyone know of a website, or perhaps a book[,] that explains this aspect of the Internet?

    See the Spring 1999 issue of the (now online?) magazine 2600, which had an article titled, "Internet Peering." Another good resource is the website of Boardwatch [boardwatch.com] magazine.

  • >The joke, of course, is on you. If greedheads like you get your way
    >you will screw the pootch.

    Ahh, I see. You've directed all of your retirement funds to
    invest *your* money in companies that spend on infrastructure and
    give it away free, rather than those that seek a return on
    investment?

    >My mod points gave me a really hard choice here. Mark you as a troll
    >or answer your BS.

    I doubt that would have given him a problem. There are enough
    people around here that understand basic economics that your
    abuse of moderation would have been quickly undone.

    hawk
  • Genuity is formerly GTE Internetworking, which is formerly BBN. I believe BBN was one of the first backbone providers.
  • ...so large, in fact, that I buy OC-3 connections from them in several areas of the United States. It costs me many dollars per huge leased circuit from a servicing telco, plus "ISP" charges from UUNet, plus bandwidth charges from UUNet. I also buy similarly large circuits from other providers.

    Let's also say that these links aren't just used for my employees to surf the web, but also for other Net users to pull down trialware, patches, and other such nicieties from my various geographically dispersed FTP/web servers. Thus, my inbound/outbound traffic ratios are roughly at a 1.5:1 ratio. I'm not an ISP, but perhaps a good-sized content provider, like Yahoo or Lycos.

    Thus, the question: When do I get to stop being a customer of UUNet, and become a free-exchange peer? How do I flip that switch and save myself a lot of cash? Will UUNet prevent me from doing so? After all, I'm likely worth much more to them as a customer than as a peer.

    Just some food for thought. *munch munch*

  • I credited and linked to interesting-people in my writeup, but apparently it didn't survive the editorial chopping block. IP [interesting-people.org] is a sort of more intelligently editted/moderated Slashdot, but without the annoying high-churn discussions :)
  • ...you really expect them to be responsive to stopping spam? Offering "peering" just lets UUnet tell people "it's not our fault [spammersite] is spamming. We just carry bits. Go bug them or go bugger off." Sorry, I follow the 1st doctorine policy: 1st carrier of the spam is as equally guilty as the spammer if he doesn't imediately exact retribution upon his clients who spam.
  • I hear ya... When I worked for EarthLink/MindSpring, we were told to avoid giving users UUNet POPs at all costs. Unless they had no choice, it was verboten. And, if people used too many hours, they would get the onus on their shoulders of being 'UUNet Disabled'. The "Largest Provider of the Real Internet" really wants to make sure they avoid paying as much as possible to these guys... They really rip them off.
  • Peering is what makes the internet work, (in a round-about way) the internet is nothing but various connected networks, when you peer with another network, you link to them - you have a ircut put in between you - and them, you allow traffic leaving your network, to enter thiers. think of this in terms of traceroute results, lets use PSI & Exodus for example (and for the sake humor considering they cut off peering with each other over the summer)

    To get to Exodus, from PSI (now they do not peer) a customer must travel thru another network, - this adds more hops to the path.

    I havent run a traceroute between them in ages, but if PSI is lucky, a network they peer with / also peers with Exodus - etc.

    if not, even more hops will add up.

    Now I've given the example, you can see why peering is good for ALL USERS, when your ISP peers, it makes less hops and usually faster transit between your ISP and the ISP they peer with -

    In short, peering is good for the net - peering IS the net.

    Also, after reading the article, I think it's misleading, the article is not really saying UUNET will offer free peering. Read it again :)

  • Funny. (Score:2)

    by mrsam ( 12205 )
    The biggest honker there just has to be this:
    2. Operational Requirements

    The following operational requirements apply both to the Requester and to the WorldCom Internet Network with which it desires to enter into a settlement-free interconnection arrangement:

    ...

    2.7 Each Internet Network must be responsive to unsolicited email and network abuse complaints, as well as routing and security issues, providing a knowledgeable technician within a two-hour period after notice.

    If UUNET really intends to implement this policy, they need to immediately depeer themselves from the rest of the world. UUNET is currently at the top of Spamcop statistics. Anyone who had to deal with UUNET-originated spam knows very well that abuse@uu.net is just a big gaping sinkhole. uu.net doesn't just routinely ignore standard spam complaints. They'll ignore pretty much any complaint unless you show them a penis that's bigger than theirs. They only respond when things escalate to the point where their entire netblocks are just about to be plonked into global spam filters.

    ---

  • Totally agree, peering should benifit both parties and UUNets peering has *always* been open, its just that nobody knew what the requirments were :-) Furthermore there weren't really any networks large enough for UUNet to peer with where the peering would provide any advantage to UUNet.

    If you're a small little ISP you have to pay for trannsit capacity why should you get massive bandwidth free from the world's largest ISP?

    Generally it works this way: Big ISPs peer with big ISPs, medium sized ISPs peer with medium sized ISPs and pay the big ISPs for transit, small ISPs peer with small ISPs and some stupid medium ISPs plus pay the either the medium ISPs for transit (cheap) or Big ISPs for transit (more expensive).

    This news item means nothing unless you're a very large ISP (I mean large, not just think you are), you now know how much bigger you need to be to get free peering with UUNet. I think this point is proven by all the off topic crap posted regarding this article on PoPs and spam. Most /.ers don't even know what peering is.

    I think part of UUNets rational behind this is to simply stop the medium sized ISPs who think they're massive bothering them with "Look, we're really big, peer with us". Now UUNet can just say: "Do you meet this requirements?". The chances are that these ISPs are already *paying* UUNet for transit anyway so what's the chance of UUNet giving them more bandwidth for free? I'd say about none.

    To the parent poster: If you are really (and I mean really) interested in peering find a book called Internet Routing Architectures by Bassam Halabi (Cisco Press), it explains a lot of History behind the net / peerings / NAPs. It also contains a lot of information on the ins and outs of configuring routers for BGP if that kind of thing turns you on.

  • I hate to say this, but no, you're not the only one :)

  • UUNet = SpewSpewNet? (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Given the current state of their spammer infestation problems, particularly on their dialup circuits, AND their apparent lack of interest in doing anything about it, I'm surprised ANYone would want to peer with them. They didn't earn the moniker 'SpewSpewNet' for nothing...

  • Re:They can only afford it because... (Score:5)

    by Tackhead ( 54550 ) on Tuesday January 09, 2001 @10:30PM (#517579)
    >Because they're now sticking it to their wholesale customers, the ISP's who rely on their POPs.

    Good point - I've long suspected that uu.net isn't really interested in the business of POP-leasing. It'd explain a lot of things, not just the spam problem. (Moderators - mod the parent of this post up!)

    With the impending doom of PSINet, however, they may be able to jack up the rates high enough to make it profitable again. Goodness knows Worldcom's desperate enough for revenue.

    (OK, useful commentary over, now on to more kvetching about the dreck uu.net shovels into my mailbox every friggin' day...)

    If you're an ISP, consider finding alternate arrangements. More and more uu.net dialups are finding their way into routers' blocklists every day as individual admins give up on uu.net dialups as nothing but a spam source.

    I'm off to tweak Apache into displaying "If you're reading this, you're on a uu.net POP. Go tell your ISP to lease their POPs from someone a little more reputable" whenever a user comes in from 63.[wholebunchastuff]...

    Yeah, I know, uu.net probably leases the same POP to multiple ISPs and does authentication at the RADIUS server level, so you can't just say "63.foo.bar.baz is msn.com, 63.foo.bar.qux is earthlink.net".

    But dialsprint arguably had the same problem (I don't think they're exclusively Earthlink?), and went from 25000+ spams a day reported to Spamcop down to nearly nothing upon blocking port 25. Sure, it took six months of half the 'net bitching at them 24/7, but they finally relented, and the spamload dropped within 24 hours of implementation. Looks like all their spammers have since migrated to uu.net, who remain unresponsive after three years.

  • > How many ISPs do you know of (no, AOL is *not* an ISP, it's an advertising agency . . .) that even come close to this one requirement

    Buggered if I know. Anyone remotely big enough has already been swallowed up.

    If AOL owns equipment (as opposed to just leasing POPs and assigning them .aol.com DNS info), they might qualify, but I can't imagine why they'd bother. I'd put good money that the vast majority of AOL's traffic is just bits being shovelled from one part of AOL's network to another. Why peer? Their users are just on a really big LAN.

    Of course, if AOL merely leases POPs, then that "internal to AOL" traffic is a heck of a lot. But if AOL is mostly leased POPs from ISPs, then they can't meet the geogrpahic requirements.

    Hmm... if it's half-and-half, though... maybe they are the one. Didn't AOL pick up a big pile of modem banks and other ISP toys when they bought out Compuserve a few years back?

    Other ideas - maybe the Mindspring/Earthlink agglomeration? Or the biggest-ass uu.net "reseller", good ol' msn.com?

  • Ermmm, AS_PATH prepend some of your routes towards INSnet perhaps? Listen, this is your fault either way you look at it: If you don't use bandwidth you are paying for, why do you still pay for it?

    "To get from UUNet's own traceroute tool to us they recommend the shortest route as down INSnet"

    Nonsence, you recommend it. You're multihomed so unless you're very small you will have your OWN AS and can fully infulence how YOUR routes are advertised. BGP won't just ballance your traffic nicely over both links. Have a look at prepending *some* of your routes towards INSnet and monitor the traffic.

    Learn how to configure your routers so you make use of your bandwidth effectivly. Either way you look at this, it isn't UUNets fault.

  • UUNet's policy used to be "if you were as big as us, you could peer with us for free". Of course, that policy was pretty good, except for the fact that nobody is as big as UUNet. So now, after realizing that they were no longer the darlings of the peering world, they've lowered their standards.

    Kind of odd, but it sounds like the dating practices of some people I know. Therefore, I offer the theory that peering is like dating, and UUNet *really hates* a blind date.

  • > When I worked for EarthLink/MindSpring, we were told to avoid giving users UUNet POPs at all costs.

    Fascinating. Regrettably, it appears that policy has begun to change (or ELNK/MSPG is real desperate for POP space, probably a combination of both), as I've begun to see reports of uu.net POPs on their network status pages.

    Good on ya, though. Even from a customer service standpoint, I'd rather dial into a POP that's dedicated to my own ISP, rather than share it with the zillion other ISPs in the area. You can control how much capacity you put into your own POPs. With uu.net, I'd imagine it's a matter of paying more, and having it take longer. The delays from phone companies on adding capacity to a POP are pretty scary - and presumably wouldn't start until after you'd begged (and paid) uu.net to beg (and pay) the phone company to do the trunking magic.

  • Re:Funny. (Score:4)

    by Tackhead ( 54550 ) on Tuesday January 09, 2001 @10:57PM (#517584)
    Quoth uu.net:
    > > Each Internet Network must be responsive to unsolicited email and network abuse complaints,

    Quoth mrsam, probably after spraying coffee all over his monitor:
    > [...] abuse@uu.net is just a big gaping sinkhole.

    I don't see any contradiction. I mean, nowhere does it say that uu.net has to be responsive! It just says that that if you wanna peer with 'em, you have to be responsive.

    "Wanna peer with us? Be a good netizen and whack your spammers so we don't have to carry the traffic. But don't expect us to do do jack shit about the spam our users cram through your pipes."

    To which my response would be "I wouldn't peer in their mouths if they were dyin' of thirst", but I digress.

  • Hmm, this is a little long-winded... The Genuity mentioned in the article about UUNet isn't the Genuity that exists today. About four years ago Genuity was this company headquarted in Arizona who did primarily web hosting and was trying desparately (and failing) to get into the backbone business. Through a series of acquisitions of a protracted period of time Genuity disappeared. When I came on the scene back in Aug. of 1999 I was working for GTE Internetworking which was what came from GTE buying/merging with BBN Planet. However, last year when Verizon was created they had to spin off the majority of the internet infrastructure and that was created and called Genuity. Why did they chose that name? Who knows. Why not call it BBN Planet? Anyway, today's Genuity has nothing to do with the old Genuity other than the name. What fun.
  • UUNET is by far the largest Tier 1 by any relevant measure and is already approaching a dominant position in the Internet backbone market. Based upon a study conducted in February 2000, UUNET's share of all Internet traffic sent to or received from the customers of the 15 largest Internet backbones in the United States was 37%, more than twice the share of Sprint, the next-largest Tier 1, which had a 16% share. These 15 backbones represent approximately 95% of all U.S. dedicated Internet access revenues. UUNET's and Sprint's 53% combined share of Internet traffic is at least five times larger than that of the next-largest IBP.
  • ok, there are several requirements for peering, and peering does not mean that people get transit.

    for one, before you can exchange bgp routing information with another provider, you must goto a registry (ARIN for the US), and apply for an Autonomous System Number (ASN). there is a $500/yr. fee for this. you have to prove to ARIN that you deserve one of these numbers.

    secondly, peering is when two networks get together and exchange their network routing information with each other, but only *their* network information.

    for example, we have isps a, b, c, and d. a connects to b, b connects to c, and c connects to d. if b and c peer, c cannot get to a and b cannot get to d. if b buys transit from c, then b can get to d.

    it all depends on what you allow the networks you exchange traffic with to see. peering just lets others terminate traffic on your network, but not through your network. transit is a customer service that allows a network to traverse your network to get to another.

    therefore, this will have zero impact on spam levels as most spam houses do not qualify for peering. even if they do, they only get to pass traffic to uunet, not through uunet.
  • Whats worse than spam? The People who constantly cry about it. I work for an ISP and for every spam some people get they send out 5+ spams whining about it. It's call a mail filter, use it. Look at it from an ISP stand point. Who are you going to side with, the customer/spammer who pays you ten of thousands of dollars a year or more or some whining person who put their email address on every form they can... I think half the time this person got the SPAM becuase the gave the spammer there email address on some form or didn't uncheck the don't spam me box on a webform. I have had an email address for 4 years now and I don't get spammed at all, why cause I don't plaster on every stupid webform I see. Just get some webamil account and use that for an email address to give to people like Real, Shockwave and Amazon.
  • c&w, psinet, verio, qwest, sprint, bbn/gte/genuity, timewarner, att, and others i can't think of at the moment.
  • There are enough people around here that understand basic economics that your abuse of moderation would have been quickly undone.

    Your right. Even _ganga_ who's been smoking too much, knows beter. That's why he's a troll.

    Hawk, however, would not have bought Bell shares before Bell was regulated. That's why I have to answer trolls from time to time.

  • Looks like at least one dork believes this guy.
  • UUNet is probably just doing this to protect the spammers. They are just calling the spammers peers and carrying their shit for free.

  • Aha! Here's the reason they wouldn't do bilateral peering -- nobody would give UUNET staff a shell account:
    The two Internet Networks must exchange with each other prior to any settlement-free interconnection agreement a free shell or PPP account
  • Interesting; peers are expected to be responsive to UCE complaints. And I though uunet was about second or third on the list of spam-friendly providers?!
  • > The Requester shall operate facilities capable of terminating customer leased line IP connections onto a router in at least 50% of the geographic region in which the WorldCom Internet Network with which it desires to interconnect operates such facilities. This currently equates to 15 states in the United States, 8 countries in Europe, or 2 countries in the Asia-Pacific region.

    Hmmm. If they're just trying to hook their larger competitors into a deal, what good does it do anyone else? They forbid peering with their networks through anyone else (presumably companies already peering). Anyone who's got enough equipment to cover half UUNet's geographic area is going to be pretty lonely at the top. How many ISPs do you know of (no, AOL is *not* an ISP, it's an advertising agency . . .) that even come close to this one requirement?

  • More info (Score:5)

    by Garpenlov ( 34711 ) on Tuesday January 09, 2001 @07:20PM (#517596) Homepage
    There's a more detailed explanation of what this really means at http://www.interesting-people.org/200101/0015.html [interesting-people.org] . (Stolen from the NANOG discussion today, the thread starts here: http://www.cctec.com/maillists/nanog/current/msg00 681.html [cctec.com]).


  • About time. They're only doing it because the cat's out of the bag. The other tier one providers are starting to move that way, and since they peer with the others, they'll get the traffic either way. They nearly screwed a good chunk of the Internet when they did this, as I recall, and now they tell us how wonderful they are for un-screwing their own mess.

    1Alpha7

  • But am I the only one who read this as "New UUNet policy offers no-charge peeing?"


  • Does this effect the average end user? Will it help latency? Will it reduce cost to the end user?

    It would be nice if there were cost savings passed on to end users - after all... if there's no tribute...

    It seems to me that bandwidth is a horrible commodity these days - everyone has too much to spare - you almost have to give it away. (Well, not quite - but its a far sight better then 3 or 4 years ago)

  • They can only afford it because... (Score:5)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 09, 2001 @08:41PM (#517600)
    Sure, UUNet is offering to do peering for free. Why? Because they're now sticking it to their wholesale customers, the ISP's who rely on their POPs. The free ISP's are tanking. Their only real competitor in quantity and quality, PSINet, is going under fast. Mark my words, they're going to stick it to the ISP's that rely on them; don't be surprised if you see the providers that count on UUNet start jacking their prices up, just to break even. I work for one of those ISP's... UUNet started ramping up their wholesale prices last month.
  • It seems to me that bandwidth is a horrible commodity these days - everyone has too much to spare - you almost have to give it away. (Well, not quite - but its a far sight better then 3 or 4 years ago)
    Tell that to the victims of the Slashdot Effect.

    Burris

  • They faced anti-trust lawsuit in Europe over this (Score:3)

    by Pengo ( 28814 ) on Wednesday January 10, 2001 @12:32AM (#517602) Journal

    To get to my servers in our London datacenter from a UUNet connection, it covers about 15 hops that include a trans-contenental hop to DC up to New York, back over AboveNet fiber to London again and response does the same path.

    It's a joke.

    A lot of major ISP's will buy their bandwidth from UUNet and let the other bandwidth providers PEER. But, as you can see quickly, it makes a bit of sense, from the business perspective, to do business with UUNet. If you don't your customers will be traversing back to the United States to see your datacenter!

    Now, according to the people at abovenet, UUNet has to start to comply do to the fact that other hosting companies (colt, exodus, abovenet, etc) as well as all the local isp's etc, that belong to Ripe, could quit peering with UUNet and that would cause UUNet a LOT of grief for UUNet and their customers.

    Anyway, think of it as a bandwidth Union.

    Anyway, this is a bit of a long rant.. but I am a frustrated ex-uunet customer that has moved to another ISP looking for non-monopolistic support and service.



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