Saturday, August 3, 2013

Network Interconnection Explained

Jon Brokkin does a nice job of explaining peering and interconnection agreements between Internet service providers can interfere with user experience. 

There are business issues of several types, some related to revenue models, others related to the more-prosaic details of how carriers historically have compensated each other for exchanging traffic.

Disputes between ISPs over settlement-free interconnection sometimes directly resemble the disputes between cable companies and programming networks over new contract terms, and generally for the same reason: money earned by one of the parties, and money paid by one of the parties. 



Read it here. Often, one of the parties to such a dispute tries to position a dispute as an attack on network neutrality. It isn't. The disputes are about interconnection of networks. But that does not mean there are no business issues. Those issues can be genuine. 

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