[LINK] Australian ISP Peering

[Tom Koltai]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: link-bounces at mailman1.anu.edu.au 
> [mailto:link-bounces at mailman1.anu.edu.au] On Behalf Of Geoff Huston
> Sent: Tuesday, 17 March 2009 9:23 PM
> To: stephen at melbpc.org.au
> Cc: link at anu.edu.au
> Subject: Re: [LINK] Australian ISP Peering
<SNIP>
> So peering is not a panacea here - it has its uses and meets some  
> objectives in this market, but it won't solve everything. This is a   
> business where economies of scale are critical to sustaining a cost  
> efficient infrastructure base, and if you attempt to perform this  
> infrastructure provisioning with private sector vehicles you will  
> always find that the base business will tend to aggregate 
> into a small  
> number of high volume operators. Now you could always attempt to  
> perform the infrastructure investment using public funds (such as  
> happened with the initial overland and undersea telegraph 
> services in  
> the late 19th century) but right now we are living out the legacy of  
> the triumph of deregulation and competitive capitalism of the 
> 80's so  
> we have the challenge of attempting to fit a whole bunch of mutually  
> incompatible concepts into a public policy framework about  
> telecommunications service provision for the next few 
> decades. Little  
> wonder that it gets confusing from time to time, and little wonder  
> that ISP players, both large and small, slide off into dark and  
> unpalatable areas of market abuse from time to time.
> 
> I'm not sure if this diatribe has shed more light or 
> confusion on the  
> topic, but, you did ask.... :-)
> 
> regards,
> 
>     Geoff


If we compare your 1994 dissertation with later revisions, there are
minor differences.
My question is this - 

With the proviso that the target was a level playing field with zero
settlement for local data exchange

Ie: all Suydney ISP's peer for free with all Sydney ISP's 
All Perth with all Perth
Intercity Transit is NOT included
Overseas Transit is NOT included.

What rationale could Telstra possibly have in not adhering to a truly
open MLPA Multi Lateral Peering Agreement with all comers. Surely the
five year old Unwired Experiment has proven that the BLPA (Bilateral
Peering) agreements that Tesltra offer at a price are more expensive
than bandwidth to the USA. (This is not only extraordinary, but possibly
could even be considered extortionistically opportunistic designed to
sell E1's across the pond.)

Not withstanding your comments about stability and infrastructure - lets
discount the AUIX/SAIX/WAIX/VIX models and use Pipe Networks as our
example....

If everyone in Australia was available via Pipe Networks..... (Stable,
secure infrastructure) - what possible motive could Telstra have in not
peering at a local level with everyone - apart from actively ensuring
that local E-commerce is at a disadvantage.

And do you expect that policy to change overnight once PPC-1 is
connected later this year ?


Tom










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