1. QoS: Definition “Quality of Service” Or “Quantity of Service”
“Pay me more to drop their packets first”
Or “Quantity of Service”
Avi’s view
Most loss is between ASs; most backbones have resolved their intra-AS loss, except when router bugs or fiber cuts hit – i.e. more temporary, less chronic.
Research is needed to quantify this question (where most loss is on end-end connections)

2. QoS: The Problem
Problems of inter-AS end-end QoS are primarily political, not technical
But they exist and apply to both transit and peering relationships
Transit
Hard to buy very burstable pipes affordably (burst “premiums”, full-pipe sales)
Peering
“How can you sell me connectivity if you don’t believe in connection to other networks”
Two camps, both affecting 50+% of packets
Even large providers have difficulty provisioning new pipes quickly

3. QoS: Solutions AboveNet’s solution Akamai’s solution Netaxs’s solution
Peer aggressively, globally
Single-AS
Cold-potato (Honor MEDS + more specifics)
Akamai’s solution
Deploy across ASs
Use OPP (other people’s peering) to hop (sometimes multi-hop) across networks
Netaxs’s solution
Peer but also buy transit from 2-3 providers; perform proactive monitoring of inter-AS connectivity and do route tuning automatically

4. QoS: Futures
The “large-provider” aggregated-peering environments going in (primarily into Equinix facilities) in 5-8 cities
One goal is to be able to do cross-provider SLAs
Another approach is those who buy transit from many providers, +/- peering, +/- “intelligent route control software”
Big problems for the future remain political:
Coordinating “numbers in routers” and contracts, even among large providers
Coordinating with smaller/edge providers