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by AnthonyMouse 4250 days ago
> Now I think there is a decent argument that ISPs should have to have free peering available at their local loop level. If congent wants to peer at the CO office of the local telecom, it should be able to do it.

That's what the whole dispute is about. "Verizon is a Tier 1 provider" is some kind of meaningless talking point with no relevance to anything. Cogent and Level 3 are already transit providers with national networks, they don't need to use Verizon's transit network because they have their own. The problem is that they have traffic they want to pass to Verizon in LA for Verizon's LA customers and Verizon won't give them access without paying a toll. The fact that Verizon also has fiber going from LA to Houston and San Francisco has no effect on any part of that.
2 comments
AnthonyMouse 4250 days ago
Actually, let me revise that. The fact that Verizon is a Tier 1 provider does have an effect -- it's the motive for Verizon's anti-competitive behavior.

The traditional arrangement is that you have a last mile provider in each region and a collection of Tier 1 providers who they pay to provide transit between them. If a last mile provider is also a Tier 1 network then the relationship is different. Rather than a monopoly last mile network shopping for a transit provider and the transit providers all competing with and peering with each other, you have a large monopoly last mile provider who doesn't need a transit provider and is in competition with the other transit providers.

The situation changes from one where Standard Oil is buying trucks from Ford and Chevy to one where Standard Oil starts making their own trucks and can charge prohibitively high prices for fuel to Ford and Chevy customers to destroy their business and force customers to buy the monopolist's trucks.

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rhino369 4250 days ago
No it's not what the dispute is about. The Verizon/Cogent or L3 peering points are nowhere near the local loop.

Verizon isn't a fake T1, it's a real honest to goodness T1.

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AnthonyMouse 4250 days ago
> The Verizon/Cogent or L3 peering points are nowhere near the local loop.

Do you have some kind of cite for this? If it didn't already matter which Verizon peering point they were using then it wouldn't matter if any particular one was congested because Cogent could just dump the traffic on a different one in a different city.

Is your point that Level 3 isn't a Tier 2 network but Verizon is? Obviously Level 3 is going to peer with Verizon somewhere in Greater Los Angeles and Verizon would carry the traffic from there to Long Beach or whatever. But then you would seem to be suggesting that the Tier 1 network should be paying the Tier 2 network.

> Verizon isn't a fake T1, it's a real honest to goodness T1.

The Tier 1 network they own is not fictional, it is only not relevant. The traffic for Verizon's customers in Los Angeles is not delivered to Verizon in New York.

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