Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!aplcen!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!usc!ucsd!ucbvax!PSI.COM!schoff
From: schoff@PSI.COM ("Martin Lee Schoffstall")
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: Dial up access to Internet facilities
Message-ID: <9006011634.AA17989@psi.com>
Date: 1 Jun 90 16:34:51 GMT
References: <3103@husc6.harvard.edu>
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 50


 	Many regional internet service providers forbid "third party"
 connections and nets-behind-nets because they see such access as depriving
 them of the revenue they would obtain from a directly-connected customer.
 While this may be a valid business concern, and while it has the side effect
 of allowing the regional to enforce a certain quality of service, it can
 preclude some interesting and potentially cost-effective (at least for the
 customers) structures.

Revenue is only one issue, there are considerations of performance,
debugging, responsability and market perception:

PERFORMANCE:
	There are cutomers who opt for 9.6-19.2 Internet connectivity,
	who don't understand why their link is unusable after they
	feed a couple fortune 500 companies with UUCP behind it, then
	potentially they want to offload their DNS to their service
	provider, which most regionals do, but why do we do it, for them or
	for the companies behind them which we have no relationship with.

DEBUGGING:
	So the MX record doesn't work, so their sendmail.cf is misconfigured
	in doing this, so the side behind them calls the service
	provider to ask questions, get help, whatever.  For the
	regionals working with each other all the time, the  RIGHT
	assumption is that everyone is carrying each other at some
	level, and that the people at the ends are paying for
	the service.  A terminus uucp connection (which is the
	norm for the problem sites), pays nothing.

RESPONSABILITY:
	Who is responsible for that uucp connection, especially when
	friend system administrator A and University B moves onto
	make some big money at Commercial company C.

MARKET PERCEPTION:
	Maybe this is the largest issue of all, without even trying
	the service quality perception of network Z can be drawn
	down by a dozen bad uucp connections who's users think
	they are on ZNet and they tell their friends about how
	it isn't reliable, doesn't work, poor performance etc...


Some organizations including PSI/PSINet throughout the US and
CERFNet throughout California have simply decided that the
real solution is to establish local dialups everywhere they
are, and provide CHEAP UUCP connections and deal with this
directly.

Marty