* Stephen Sprunk > What it all comes down to is that the majority of eyeballs are on > "residential" connections that are relatively expensive to provide > but for which are sold at a relatively low price (often 1/10th as > much per megabit of capacity). Those eyeball ISPs cannot or will not > charge their customers the full cost of "receiving" traffic so they > want money from the more profitable content ISPs "sending" the > traffic to offset their losses.
Another point worth mentioning is that the traffic is going to flow between those two ISPs _anyway_. Therefore, in many cases the only ones to profit from them not reaching a peering agreement (settlement-free or not) is their upstream(s), who is probably delighted to be able to charge them both for the transit traffic. Regards, -- Tore Anderson
