> the company feeds a gigantic 3.5 terabytes into Deutsche Telekom's network [...] Deutsche Telekom has done everything in its power to ensure smooth data traffic. [...] The start of the rerouting of data traffic in the night from Tuesday to Wednesday went smoothly.
It sounds to me like DT was not prepared to handle the volume of this traffic along the alternate paths it would have taken if Meta's paid transit sessions were removed, so in the interest of avoiding disruption of their network, kept them running temporarily, settlement-free, until mitigation was completed. Great deal for Meta while it lasted!
The word "deal" implies some kind of (commercial) transaction that has a price tag associated with it (deal = good price).
But DT keeping this peering connection up should be (IMHO) DT just doing the job they're paid for.
DT's customers pay for "Internet access", and since Meta is on the Internet, the customers should be able to connect to it. Customer's send requests to Meta, DT passes those requests along, and it is DT's job to pass along Meta's responses.
Why should Meta pay DT anything? DT is claiming to offer a service, and part of that service is transporting the responses to DT's customer's requests. If those responses are high bandwidth it is part of DT's job to deal with it. If 'dealing with it' entails special connections to particular corners of the Internet to better serve their customer's then it is DT's job to do that.
> The word "deal" implies some kind of (commercial) transaction that has a price tag associated with it (deal = good price).
The value that Meta received is equivalent to what Meta is now paying their third-party transit provider to transit this same volume of traffic to DT. My napkin math suggests that this is tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars per month, at 3.5Tbps and pennies per megabit.
> DT's customers pay for "Internet access", and since Meta is on the Internet, the customers should be able to connect to it.
What do you mean by "on the Internet"? Meta is "on the Internet" by virtue of paying transit providers to propagate their IP prefixes within the DFZ.
You can't just show up at an IXP or other peering location, announce your routes, and expect them to propagate globally. You need to convince at least one transit-free network to carry them before you're truly "on the Internet". Meta used to pay DT for transit, and now they don't. Meta is now "on the Internet" via third-party transit, rather than directly via DT.
> Why should Meta pay DT anything?
Meta doesn't need to pay DT anything, but if they're not paying, they shouldn't expect free connectivity services from DT. This traffic can now flow between DT and Meta via transit, instead of directly between DT and Meta.
> If 'dealing with it' entails special connections to particular corners of the Internet to better serve their customer's then it is DT's job to do that.
Which is exactly what DT did by providing settlement-free peering, temporarily, while their links with other ISPs, who they do have a business relationship with, could be beefed up. Now those links can handle the traffic, and now the traffic is flowing over them rather than over direct peering with Meta. No traffic was dropped in the process; neither DT's customers nor Meta were or are being harmed.
> the company feeds a gigantic 3.5 terabytes into Deutsche Telekom's network [...] Deutsche Telekom has done everything in its power to ensure smooth data traffic. [...] The start of the rerouting of data traffic in the night from Tuesday to Wednesday went smoothly.
It sounds to me like DT was not prepared to handle the volume of this traffic along the alternate paths it would have taken if Meta's paid transit sessions were removed, so in the interest of avoiding disruption of their network, kept them running temporarily, settlement-free, until mitigation was completed. Great deal for Meta while it lasted!