3 ms·

Eh??? Paying for a faster connection??? What are you trying to say? That if I own a website then it's ok to be charged money by an ISP to get an extra chunk of

• sorbus 16y ago
  No. You're charged for the connection your server has to the wider internet. The end-user is charged for their connection to the wider internet. Note that I'm talking about the total bandwidth available, not the speed of the connection to an end-user. The distinction is important: having more bandwidth means that you can send data to more users without sacrificing individual speed. Peering arrangements between providers are the closest it should be possible to get to paying for a larger chunk of the last mile: because the server they are trying to talk to is fewer hops away, they will have lower pings, and possibly more responsive page-loading. In a situation where the connection of a network to the backbone is saturated, this appears to be the same as giving the peered provider's packets priority, since that connection is not saturated. This situation is somewhat distinct, however, being an issue of incompetence or third-party malice (the connection is either too small for normal usage or being attacked) instead of hardware designed to prioritize packets by source (which would be malice or greed on the part of the provider). This assumes a simple network topography, with a single connection to non-peered network, but it may be expanded to explain situations involving larger networks.