Matthew Moyle-Croft wrote:
Priority for IXes is pointless. No one that I'm aware of does differential priority on their Internet networks which can be accessed externally. (Nothing like making a DDoS really effective). Why? Because priority is about trust relationships. Fundementally the Internet is untrustworthy. Therefore I can't trust any markings coming externally. How do I know a peer is really trustworthy or that their customers are?
I'm inclined to agree here. The contractual issues (ignoring the technical) would also be quite interesting, where you have 3 or more parties involved, all guaranteeing (?) those QoS capabilities. I don't see a practical use for IXP enabling quality of service capabilities, except perhaps for the signalling protocols used such as BGP. This has a separate set of headaches as well.
If people want to organise standard passing of priority bits for non-Internet traffic, then that's all well and good. But I suspect the relationship will have to be very different to the nature of Internet IXes.
If you want QoS enabled interconnects, this is very surely what private interconnects are for, with their associated contractual obligations and agreed capability sets. aj