Internet Partitioning - Cogent vs Level 3?

slashmicah asks: "Internet partitioning and Tier 1 ISPs are something most people don't know much about (myself included). Today, however, some Slashdot readers might have run into some issues involving these two topics. Cogent Communications and Level 3, both Tier 1 ISPs, are apparently having some 'undisclosed' disagreements, causing an Internet partition by turning-off or deactivating their peering point. Cogent Co. has released a statement explaining their side of the problem, however they have no mention of when the problem will be fixed, or when they will sort it out. This partitioning is a problem because any [single-homed] computers that are connected through Cogent Co, can not connect to [single-homed] computers connected through Level 3. Having spent all day sorting out this problem, I ask Slashdot: Isn't there a better way that the issue of peering can be handled/regulated? If not, does the future hold a scenario in which the Internet is split into several separate networks, only to be connected at the whims of large corporations?"

Comments

Reminds me of...

[mr_z_beeblebrox]

If not, does the future hold a scenario in which the Internet is split into several separate networks, only to be connected at the whims of large corporations?

A quote about censorship. Come on, we all know it. The internet will see that as damage and route around it. The very fact that you mention that this affects single homed computers on one or the other network means that even at the onset of this "partitioning" it is ineffective.

OK, WTF time here

[EndlessNameless]

For something as essential to the nation as internet service, maybe it's time to consider implementing regulations similar to what electric, water, gas, and telecommunication companies have.

If my grandma can't check her email for a day, I don't really care that much. If my doctor is consulting with a cardiac specialist over using VoIP (V being either voice or video) concerning an acute health problem then I have a much larger problem with outages. As long as we have important economic or healthcare services running over the internet--which is the foreseeable future--this sort of thing needs to either be avoided or have a pre-planned workaround.

I guess this explains some of the unresponsive hosts I came across today. And here I was thinking it must be Bob's Worm of the Week.

Re:Interesting scenario, though most likely untrue

[Anonymous Coward]

If large companies connect to multiple Tier 1s, then they pretty much don't have to care; their customers can still reach them.

Personally, there are several sites I can't get to from home now. I didn't have any problem getting them from work (UT Austin). I have effectively zero power to rectify this. Annoying.

Now, if Cogent offered me some way to connect to them for an additional $5/mo... would I?

Think... if the government allowed an additional $5/mo. for each Tier 1 my ISP (Time Warner) is connected to... my cable modem bill would instantly double.

That's a scenario that bothers me more than the dissolution of the Net does. Flip side, the Internet would get a whole lot more redundant really quick...

public peering!

[po_boy]

Everyone knows what a success MAE-East, MAE-West and the rest of the public peering points have been. Let's build a few more of them! Or, even better, encourage the federal government to get involved. Perhaps spending some of the federal budget on this problem would be a good idea. I think I recall a peering point clause in the constitution somewhere.

In all seriousness, these private companies will work it out when they realize that their paying customers are pissed and leaving because they're no longer selling very complete connectivity. Just like in the past, it won't take long. If TV has taught me anything, these problems are usually wrapped up pretty nicely in about 28 minutes.

Re:public peering!

[TeraBill]

Public peering points are fine, but some of this may go back to what Johna Till Johnson wrote about in this weeks issue of Network World. She says that the major backbone providers lose money on providing the Intenet backbone links and that the pricing model for this is in need of change. That may be some of what is driving Level 3 in this scenario, since they do carry substantial backbone Internet traffic. Peering points don't really address this since they generally provide a way for more regional people to interconnect and to connect to the backbone providers, but if you build an peering point and none of the big providers come, who carries stuff to the rest of the world? Most of the non-tier 1 providers don't have the pipes to carry that level of traffic. I've seen smaller peering setups built and they generally only serve to provide better access between the local providers, which does have its benefits.

And with the U.N. wanting to take a more active role in the Internet, maybe they need to start trying to manage such things. If it is a utility now, like phone service, maybe we need to do more to regulate how those relationships happen, since I'm sure that if Level 3 decided not to terminate calls from Sprint, someone at the FCC would be on it pretty quickly.

Re:Your statement is incorrect

[EndlessNameless]

In places that do not constitute a major conjunction of backbone connections, a Tier 1 provider becoming a bit of a rogue would have a more noticeable effect on its downstream customers. Additionally, if too many providers pulled this kind of stunt, the resulting inefficiency from rerouting packets in an end run around the broken link could lead to the entire net being bogged down in a manner similar to what happened when Nimda, Blaster, or Sasser+Welchia hit.

As seen on any network, a sufficient degree of inefficiency will result in DoS. How many peerage agreements would have to be cancelled for this to happen? While I freely admit I couldn't compute a number for an effective local DoS vs regional Dos vs global DoS, I would still be extremely interested in making sure it won't happen.

This could spell problems

[gcnaddict]

Lets assume Cogent and Level 3 split up one city (and I know they have done it to at least one place) amongst themselves. Someone happens to be using voip to call 911 while on Level 3, while Cogent is maintaining the 911 system's voip call receiver, preventing the voip 911 call from ever reaching it...

wow they could both be sued for huge sums of money...

Seen it before in Australia

[Airconditioning]

Reminds me on an incident that happened in Australia a couple of years back. Telstra and Optus were pretty much owned all the links outside of Australia, but Telstra lost their major one in a shipping incident. (Sharp anchors?) With nowhere for their data to go they rerouted everything through Optus to let them handle it.

Optus didn't appreciate that and promptly blocked all data between themselves and Telstra. Customers with Telstra were pretty much screwed because they couldn't contact anything and with their network going nuts even sites within Telstra sucked a lot. Still, for a couple of days there, it was two halves of an internet available in here. Was amusing to watch really.

No Rules.

[Nethead]

The internet has no government, no constitution, no laws, no rights, no police, no courts. Don't talk about fairness or innocence, and don't talk about what should be done. Instead, talk about what is being done and what will be done by the amorphous unreachable undefinable blob called "the internet user base." -Paul Vixie

Actually, for small business the economics change

[CFD339]

Important production servers need dual homed, highly reliable connectivity. Public facing servers are a commodity. The commonality of blade servers and big data center technology are escallating this.

Case in point: I've run my own data center for 12 years (18 if you could dial up bbs crap). This week, I'm shutting it down. I need more reliability for an important application, and it will be cheaper for me to outsource the public facing side to a data center (In my case, linux boxes at ServerBeach -- I can plug them, they've made me happy).

This is coming from someone with 13 years running his own shop; who owns good firewall, routing, and standby power equipment; as well as servers. Still, it will be cheaper from month 1 to outsource today. For less money, I don't have to buy (or maintain) hardware, get more bandwidth, multi-homed servers, way more reliable power and facilities, and a lower power bill.

The market is changing. More and more consumer broadband utilities (which is what they are) will have to drop out of the single homed dedidcated circuit market. Dissagree? Time Warner doesn't. Why do you think they're building state of the art colocation facilities and datacenters in the markets they serve?

Because soon public facing servers for any serious purpose will live primarily in big datacenters. The only companies to host their own, will be hosting them in their own big corporate data centers.

Corporate Silent Treatment

[Jazzinjake]

In Israel and the Palestinian Territories, this issue has been an ever-present one with regard to the cell phone companies there. While I was spending time there, many activists who were working in Palestine would get two SIM cards, (Cellcom, and either Orange or Jawwal), because Cellcom (Israeli) and Jawwal (Palestinian) wouldn't talk to each other. Furthermore, you couldn't call a Cellcom phone from a Palestinian (Paltel) land line.

When I asked for an explanation of this, it had to do with a corporate silent-treatment of sorts; because Paltel/Jawwal (the Palestinian telco) was suing Cellcom for licensing infringement and illegal operation, the Cellcom network decided to boycott the Palestinian phone carriers. This caused all sorts of problems for Palestinian society, and the effect was that everyone in Palestinian areas were ditching the local telco and getting Israeli Cellcom cell phones. Jawwal was facing dire times, after their offices were raided by Israeli military and tech imports were prevented because of blanket security concerns.

For folks on the ground, this was just one more manifestation of the intifada/occupation, even the corporations were going at it.

More background available here, here and here.

Re:Level 3's official statement

[xsonofagunx]

They're saying Cogent is intentionally not advertising routes to them via other providers, presumably because they're upset about not having a peering agreement in place. Anyone affected by this presumably needs to harass Cogent. I think you read that wrong, or maybe I am. What I'm seeing is We [L3] disconnected someone [Cogent]. Cogent, you might be a little pissed, and decide not to allow our traffic to go over your lines (go figure...). If a peer [Cogent, again] doesn't find another peer to route their traffic through, then their customers won't be able to access our network. If you're a customer of that peer [Hi, Cogent!] you're screwed, so hook up with us, or one of our partners. I'm reading it as L3 trying to dick Cogent around. Maybe that's just me. I don't care either way so far, haven't been denied access to anything yet. We should take this as a note that we should start the internet over, as a totally distributed network. Every country has a main link (of course, there are several of these for every decently sized country, or you'd kinda be defeating the distributed part...), and every state/province has their own peering to that link, and cities down from there etc. - all government owned, and agreed internationally (UN perhaps... tho they've been kinda missing with Bush in office...) that under no condition can they ever intentionally sever the link. I would even think that, government owned and funded, it would be almost a trifle for 10mbit internet connections to be had by all. Of course, the current providers would still be offering residential and business service, but the money would be going to the government, to help cover the costs of the network (along with federal subsidies), instead of Tier1 ISPs.

Inexcusable

[OldManAndTheC]

A poster on Broadband Reports said it best:

If hackers or terrorists caused this kind of disruption in the internet the government and media would freak out.