The problem here is that a framework built in one environment (settlement-free peering) has a lot of problems as the underlying environment has changed.<p>Let's say everyone in the United States had a second mailbox, and each mailbox is owned by FedEx, UPS, or DHL. To ship a package, you leave it in your box, it's picked up by your carrier, transferred to the recipient's carrier, who then delivers it to their box. Only the sender is billed, and this shipment fee includes whatever your carrier will have to pay to your recipient's carrier to complete delivery.<p>When these mailboxes are built, most people in the country are shipping as many boxes as they receive, and the number of packages sent by and received by customers of each carrier are roughly the same (let's say a total of 15,000 per day). So FedEx, UPS, and DHL, to avoid having to track every single package, just decide to "call it a wash" and deliver each other's boxes for free, under the assumption that nobody's really getting the upper hand.<p>Fast forward twenty years, and Jeff Bezos has built Amazon.com at his house. His house is a UPS house, so UPS picks up 15 million boxes from him every morning, and hands over 10 million of them to FedEx and DHL for delivery. FedEx and DHL are billing their customers for 15,000 boxes but also have to deliver Bezos' 10 million boxes.<p>You can imagine that they'd want to revisit their original agreement to "call it a wash" and start billing by the actual package.