[LINK] Peering nation-wide

[Martin Barry]

$quoted_author = "stephen at melbpc.org.au" ;
> 
> I'm writing this relaxing on a spotless white-sand beach, complete with

Life's tough!


> Anyway, the reason for writing, the serious newspapers here are full of a
> plan to arrange a country-wide ISP traffic peering system which of course
> makes excellent sense. The two main providers agree, but, one is bitching
> that the government discussion paper calls for a sixth node peering a new
> government centre for free (haha). Interesting debate if any Link peering
> experts care to advise this country re the best ways to peer nation-wide?

I'm a bit confused by your summary as the last of the philstar.com articles
indicates that PLDT, the dominant incumbent, is fighting it tooth and nail.


> <http://www.interaksyon.com/article/7469/draft-rules-on-ip-peering-out-ntc-hearing-expected-soon>
> 
> <http://www.philstar.com/Article.aspx?articleId=690802&publicationSubCategoryId=66>
> <http://www.philstar.com/Article.aspx?articleId=712616&publicationSubCategoryId=66>
> <http://www.philstar.com/Article.aspx?articleId=712956&publicationSubCategoryId=66>

It sounds much like the noises made in Australia around forcing the large
incumbents to peer with newer, growing networks. In 1997 Telstra was forced
to peer with 3 others (Optus, Connect.com [now AAPT?], Ozemail [now
Verizon]) creating the "gang of four" but the unfortunate affect was a
government decreed "tier 1" group which could exclude all other players.

These points apply to both countries:
- The incumbent(s) feels that the "smaller" networks should be buying transit. 
- Internet exchanges exist in which "smaller" networks peer with each other.
- Refusing to buy transit in the absence of peering leads to trans-ocean
  "trombone" of the traffic with resulting poor performance.

Australian ISPs tend to work around this by buying "domestic transit" to one
of the "gang of four" which is effectively access limited to all four of
them and their customers. Full international transit is sourced separately
and peering with other "small" networks takes care of the rest.

The plan in the Philippines sounds like it avoids some of flaws of the 1997
ACCC decision but introduces so new ones of it's own by selecting the way in
which peering is to be done.

This report
http://www.budde.com.au/Research/Australia-Wholesale-Internet-Peering.html
covers the Australian situation but if you don't have a lazy us$50 this blog
from Simon Hackett covers it pretty well too
http://blog.internode.on.net/2011/05/16/peering-policy-gaps-nbn/

cheers
Marty