ISP pricing

[b***@hotmail.com]

Hi,
Suppose a UK ISP has a cable from UK to the US, i.e. undersea, and they've PAID for it. Now if a middle eastern person is trying to send email to an American, then that data could go via the UK, right? i.e. it could use THAT UK ISP'S CABLE!!....? Without the middle eastern guy paying for it....? (he'll be paying HIS, middle eastern, ISP of course...). How has this issue been settled? Since each ISP's only income is from it's OWN customers.....?


THanks.

[Barry Margolin]

Post by b***@hotmail.com
Hi,
Suppose a UK ISP has a cable from UK to the US, i.e. undersea, and they've
PAID for it. Now if a middle eastern person is trying to send email to an
American, then that data could go via the UK, right? i.e. it could use THAT
UK ISP'S CABLE!!....? Without the middle eastern guy paying for it....?
(he'll be paying HIS, middle eastern, ISP of course...). How has this issue
been settled? Since each ISP's only income is from it's OWN customers.....?

How is the data getting from the middle eastern ISP to the UK ISP in the
first place?

[b***@hotmail.com]

....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.... :)


Thanks for your help.

[Barry Margolin]

Post by b***@hotmail.com
....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.