 for "no particular effort," based on the concept that the provider will make its best effort, but not offer a guarantee, to deliver the packets. When there is only one class of service, best effort is also worst effort. The different backbone providers had to exchange traffic with one another, of course, but since peering was "free," with no financial incentive to provide other ISPs with a particular rate of delivery, or any defined quality of service. As Gordon Cook described it, "Best effort has no value beyond that of an ever-deflating commodity" [23]. Backbone providers were selling commodity-grade service. They could provide premium service within their own networks, but even that can be costly, and lacked associated revenue other than preservation of market share. The old-line telecommunications business had a high expense structure too, but it had a simple solution: It set prices high enough, on average, to cover costs and make a decent return on its investment. Monopolies helped, of course. The ISPs, however, never had monopolies. They set prices at a level far below break-even. This was justified by competitive necessity: If one ISP raised its rates, then it would lose customers to one of the several others whose rates were at the lower, albeit probably unprofitable, level. At least one head of a Tier 1 ISP, however, explained his strategy to his employees [24] more openly. The idea was to wait until a shakeout happened, when its competitors ran out of money and left the businesses. Then the survivors could raise prices. This was, of course, an impossible strategy. Nor did it work for that CEO. His company was, according to its forecasts, about two years away from break- even, according to its cost and revenue curves. And indeed break-even remained at least that far away until it went bankrupt some years later. But a wait-for-a- shakeout strategy could have failed anyway. Bankrupt companies did not neces- sarily shut their doors. They often shed their debt and continued to operate. Without debt, their c