* wo...@pch.net (Bill Woodcock) [Thu 20 Jun 2013, 16:59 CEST]:
On Jun 20, 2013, at 5:37 AM, Benson Schliesser <bens...@queuefull.net> wrote:
Right. By "sending peer" I meant the network transmitting a
packet, unidirectional flow, or other aggregate of traffic into
another network. I'm not assuming anything about whether they are
offering "content" or something else - I think it would be better
to talk about peering fairness at the network layer, rather than
the business / service layer.
In that case, it's essentially never an issue, since essentially
every packet in one direction is balanced by a packet in the other
direction, so rotational symmetry takes care of the "fairness."
You're mistaken if you think that CDNs have equal number of packets
going in and out.
I think you may be taking your argument too far, though, since by
this logic, the sending and receiving networks also have control
over what they choose to transit and receive, and I think that
discounts too far the reality that it is in fact the _customers_
that are making all of these decisions, and the networks are, in the
aggregate, inflexible in their need to service customers. What a
customer will pay to do, a service provider will take money to
perform. It's not really service providers (in aggregate) making
these decisions. It's customers.
I think the point is here that networks are nudging these decisions by
making certain services suck more than others by way of preferential
network access.
-- Niels.
