On Sat, 29 Nov 2003, Petri Helenius wrote:
> If you are an access provider, specially in the consumer space, you can
> do many things to help the "Greater Internet" by keeping your own back
> yard in good shape. In the transit business, you are expected to
> deliver the bits regardless of the content so there the only viable
> option is to drop packets where the source or destination addresses
> donīt make sense.
What is the difference between a transit provider and an access provider,
specially in the consumer space? Why is a transit provider expected to
deliver the bits, but the access provider isn't? Since the bulk of
Internet access is actually provided by wholesale providers (e.g.
AOL/Earthlink buy wholesale modem access from UUNET/Level3), who is
the access provider and who is the transit provider?
And how do you handle the situation where a provider is both? UUNet, for
example, sells LOTS of T-1 lines to non-ISP businesses, and sells retail
dialup services to consumers. Sure they also sell wholesale bandwidth and
wholesale dialup services to ISPs, but it's not their whole business.
