“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 to take a look at the economics of peering of 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.”
Fascinating.
After reading that am I the only one who thinks Ed Whiteacre is a complete moron?
After all At&t is more than an end user isp. How would any isp that serves end users and has transit/peering arangements manage to institute charges to the likes of google (assuming google has some control at the network level) without losing peering and transit revenue?
Sounds like he supports the “stay warm by burning your clothes” business model. If it weren’t for access to services like Google, Vonage, etc, there would be no reason to use AT&T’s services (from the consumer point of view).
Maybe this guy thinks all those internet data packets are wearing away his copper and fibre faster than usual?
As a customer (client side), I pay my ISP a regular rate for the privaledge of using there “pipes” (lets call them something crazy like wires). They then connect the port in my wall through there network and out to the greater internetworked world; along with inspecting my packets, arbitrarily blocking ports and yelling at me for running secured server deamons for personal access to my own data.
As a customer (server side), the nebulous “they” pay there ISP a regular rate for the privaledge of using there ISP’s “pipes” (again, ‘wires’ if you will). The server’s wall port is then connected through the ISP to the greater internetworked world.
I pay for my bandwidth and connection service. They pay for there bandwidth and connetino service.
So, what’s the problem? Where does an ISP get off claiming that any server is using there networks for free? Is Google not paying to have fiber run to there server clusters?
Claiming that servers should now pay a premium on top of paying for there connections is just downright greedy. If TCP/IP where not so well designed and I could choose through which networks to route my frames, I’d say we all take our network traffic elsewhere and leave the Deathstar starved of cash and rotting in it’s own greed.
But, that’s just me.
(f’ing big business. Always looking for new and interesting ways to screw the customer out of more money for less services.)
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?”
Because ATT customers pay for Internet access, and those customers want content.
Also, a lot of the ATT infrastructure was helped along with public funds.
I think SPs that try and alienate Internet users by doing this should get de-linked. Problem solved. Other countries could really make an impact punishing clowns like this. Drop them off of BGP.
Peering wars are a very, very slippery slope, especially when done for “payback.” Generally it’s not the transit provider who feels it at all, but more often the end-user.