From: barmar@alum.mit.edu   
      
   In article ,   
    bit-naughty@hotmail.com wrote:   
      
   > ....maybe via an European ISP...? :)   
   >   
   > Aaah, but now I see what you're saying, when one ISP connects to another when   
   > they're starting up, there's some kind of revenue sharing deal, right....?   
   > Could you just explain though, I'm *starting* to get it, but I still find the   
   > whole thing a bit hard to envision in my head - for example, the European   
   > ISP, above, when it connects to the middle east ISP it signs one deal,   
   > right....? And then when it connects to the UK, another....? I'm a bit   
   > confuzzled.... :)   
      
   Try reading   
      
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peering   
      
   This mainly discusses settlement-free peering, where there's no payment   
   between the two ISPs. This is generally only done when the ISPs are of   
   similar sizes, so they expect about the same amount of traffic in each   
   direction.   
      
   When there's a big disparity between the network sizes, or the expected   
   traffic is very asymmetric (e.g. one ISP mainly serves end users, while   
   the other has lots of servers), they don't usually form peering   
   relationships. Instead, the small ISP will become a customer of the big   
   ISP, and pay for the service.   
      
   There were some very notable disputes between ISPs a few years ago,   
   where they had initially entered into settlement-free peering   
   relationships, but the smaller ISP wasn't producing enough traffic to   
   maintain that status, so the big ISP de-peered them until they agreed to   
   pay them.   
      
   --   
   Barry Margolin   
   Arlington, MA   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)