Sprint Cuts Cogent Off the Internet

superbus1929 writes "I work as a security analyst at an internet security company. While troubleshooting an issue, we learned why our customer couldn't keep his site-to-site VPN going from any location that uses Sprint as its ISP: Sprint has decided not to route traffic to Cogent due to litigation. This has a chilling effect; already, this person I worked with cannot communicate between a few sites of his, and since Sprint is stopping the connections cold (my traceroutes showed as complete, and not as timing out), it means that there is no backup plan; anyone going to Cogent from a Sprint ISP is crap out of luck."

Comments

Ah... that explains it

[djcapelis]

Heh, I was wondering why scoreboard showed they were having issues:
http://scoreboard.keynote.com/scoreboard/Main.aspx

*sigh*

So it wasn't just an outage.

Re:Ah... that explains it

[Anonymous Coward]

That is a login page, you means to use this links:

http://internetpulse.net/

Re:Ah... that explains it

[djcapelis]

Oh, right, sorry about that. Put "public" in for both the username and password.

Re:Ah... that explains it

[jonaskoelker]

Or right click the username field and select "Log in with BugMeNot", thanks to the firefox extension.

(waddayakno, it uses the username "public")

Re:Ah... that explains it

[tripdizzle]

Do you know if there is something like this that includes Comcast or is Comcast a part of one of these?? I am asking because I am having some connection issues that I am trying to figure out, that they say doesn't exist.

Re:Ah... that explains it

[compro01]

I believe Comcast gets their connectivity from Level3 or AT&T, depending on the area, but any path going through a cogent-sprint peer at some point would be affected, though that would pretty much be a "nothing we can do about it" problem as far as Comcast goes.

Try running traceroute (tracert in windows) and see where things are going, or maybe try Cogent's looking glass to find out if you're hitting in this.

Re:Ah... that explains it

[WgT2]

I wonder if Comcast would have the integrity/guts to point the end user to a site like http://www.internetpulse.net/ to explain the problem (assuming that is the problem).

Oh, good.

[FooAtWFU]

I'd been considering cancelling my laptop's EVDO service with Sprint for a while now (it's a little pricey and I don't really need it). This will be a great excuse to tell them when I call them up. :)

Re:Oh, good.

[steeleye_brad]

Except that this story's issue pertains to Sprint's ISP operations, you're talking about their wireless offerings. Same company, different divisions.

Re:Oh, good.

[Anonymous Coward]

except that wireless customers cant get to cogent either.

Re:Oh, good.

[Hes Nikke]

so the excuse to not boycot sprint is that the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing? fuck that, i'm boycotting sprint as an entire company.

Re:Oh, good.

[FooAtWFU]

TFA could theoretically maybe perhaps be full of lies, but it specifically refers to Sprint's wireless services (which are no doubt serviced by the rest of their Internet service).

Besides, I'm trying it right now and can't get to cogentco.com (though I can do just fine on my home broadband connection).

Re:Oh, good.

[nyu2]

Agree. When a company builds up a brand, then puts lots of things under that brand, they do it so that you'll carry over goodwill from one product to the next. It seems only fair to carry over the badwill as well.

Re:Oh, good.

[TooMuchToDo]

Our company buys quite a bit of transit from Cogent, and Sprint's looking glass sites are showing a complete partition between the two. Also, Cogent has offered free 100Mbit connectivity to any on-net Sprint customers until the issue is resolved.

Re:Oh, good.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, I'm just going to tell them, I don't do business with dicks, and what you did was a dick move.

Re:Oh, good.

[darinfp]

Agreed on that one. If you are going to complain, just stick to the facts.

Re:Oh, good.

[Glendale2x]

Don't be so quick to blame Sprint, especially since that's a Cogent PR release. They (Cogent) had fights with Level3 and AOL as well that had the same result: Customers of Sprint/Level3/AOL were cut off from Cogent.

Re:Oh, good.

[MrZaius]

So the excuse to not boycot sprint is that the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing?

If the hands are separated enough that they don't communicate about something like this, Sprint Wireless would still be in the wrong for failing to source out to an ISP that's capable of passing normal traffic, just like if they were separate companies. There's no excuse for this childish, petty nonsense.

Re:Oh, good.

[jaredmauch]

This is a smaller amount than in past disputes where Cogent offered free GigabitEthernets to others. Someone else noticed that it's been exactly 2 years since they brought up a direct connection. Something smells fishy here.

http://www.renesys.com/blog/2006/11/sprint-and-cogent-peer.shtml

Re:Oh, good.

[mbone]

They (Cogent) had fights with Level3 and AOL as well that had the same result: Customers of Sprint/Level3/AOL were cut off from Cogent.

And they have had (so far) the same resolution - the connection was restored after enough high level customers told them to knock it off.

Re:Oh, good.

[theaveng]

WIN.

Re:Oh, good.

[Anonymous Coward]

route your traffic through a third party isp.
the block is only for direct traffic.
1- vpn to site
2- vpn to next site from there
3- profit

Re:Oh, good.

[squiggleslash]

Same company, different division, but same shareholders.

Re:Oh, good.

[andrewd18]

My family had an issue with fraud using Sprint cell phones - we had a $20 / month cell phone plan, maximum of 30 minutes a month, for emergency uses only. We had our plan for 2 years until someone got a social security number and opened a series of phones attached to the plan. With the new phone fees and the insane amount of overage charges, our monthly bill went from $20 to $1500, three months in a row.

When we called Sprint's customer service department, they couldn't cancel the charges because nobody in the company was allowed to talk to the fraud investigation department. Nine months of complaints, refusals to pay, and BBB calls later, we finally got all the charges dropped, but I'll never work with Sprint again.

Re:Oh, good.

[Anonymous Coward]

Try again.

1. VPN to site
2. VPN to next site from there
3. loss

Re:Oh, good.

[mlwmohawk]

If the hands are separated enough that they don't communicate about something like this,

Then an outright boycott of the company will help them better focus on their business obligations and customers.

Re:Oh, good.

[geekoid]

So you won't send packet through the network they control? good luck.

Re:Oh, good.

[sorak]

I think GP may have been looking for a legal way to get out of the contract. Many cell phone ISPs have clauses in their contracts that say that customers are allowed to discontinue service without fear of penalty, if this is due to changes, made by the ISP, that affect them. I don't know about AT&T's contract, however.

Re:Oh, good.

[QuantumRiff]

Why would you boycott sprint over this? Cause "they" blocked access to cogent customers? I remember level 3 blocking access to Cogent not too long ago, and several others in the past. I'm thinking that the company that keeps playing the victim is the one that needs to be taught a lesson..

Re:Oh, good.

[Anonymous Coward]

You may not need to quit, they may just turn your EVDO data serivce off. Sprint has been recently cancelling "heavy" EVDO users after sending out a warning in July, about folks going over the new 5GB/month cap.

Re:Oh, good.

[superbus1929]

This goes beyond one company.

The issue I have is that ANY third party can just not route to whoever they want, leaving their customers in the lurch; just how many people found out about this issue because it was on Slashdot? Hell, the person we were working with found it because he just happened to think of Googling "Sprint + Cogent".

(Since it wasn't my issue, I spent the majority of my time on the call playing the new Star Ocean)

Re:Oh, good.

[Nodamnnicknamesavial]

I'm mostly wondering why you waited 3 months to sort that out... ??

Re:Oh, good.

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't be so quick to blame Sprint, especially since that's a Cogent PR release. They (Cogent) had fights with Level3 and AOL as well that had the same result: Customers of Sprint/Level3/AOL were cut off from Cogent.

I do blame Sprint. As a customer we got no prior notice of this outage so we could prepare. We didn't even get a notice after it happened. Like the article above we have site in other countries that are behind Cogent and we are using Sprint. Our site-to-site vpn's are down and we are losing a lot of money in the process.

Fortunately we have another line being installed today from another provider and we will shift our site to site vpn's to the new line.

I understand that Cogent is bullying companies. If Sprint wants to stop peering with Cogent for business reasons then fine. But to do so without giving your customers a heads up is reckless.

When we were troubleshooting the issue we called Sprint and even our business support line didn't tell us they had stopped peering. Sprint deserves all the blame. Hopefully our transition will be complete and we will be completely away from Sprint.

Re:Oh, good.

[Anonymous Coward]

So the excuse to not boycot sprint is that the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing?

If the hands are separated enough that they don't communicate about something like this, Sprint Wireless would still be in the wrong for failing to source out to an ISP that's capable of passing normal traffic, just like if they were separate companies. There's no excuse for this childish, petty nonsense.

You could work for my wife's employer, not only does the left hand not know what the right hand does, the brain does not know it has hands!

So what is Sprint providing its customers?

[bizitch]

If I'm a Sprint customer - I'd be calling Sprint right now and ask

"What the hell am I buying from you every month?
I thought I was buying a DIA circuit - as in Direct Internet Access - but apparently you don't exactly do that. That's a breach of contract - that's a violation of your SLA - I want out of my contract now .... etc etc "

Am I nuts here? It's either the freaking internet or it isn't - WTF?

Re:So what is Sprint providing its customers?

[Anonymous Coward]

you're nuts.

"internet" is a very vague term. what networks does it come with?

you don't have access to my network or any of the machines in my network (except for one public one). does that mean you're not getting the full internet?

Re:So what is Sprint providing its customers?

[ustolemyname]

Those machines are not on the internet, they connect to the internet.

Re:So what is Sprint providing its customers?

[Anonymous Coward]

that could be the same for cogent's customers, if everyone depeered them.

let's change the example.
that's like me peering with Teleglobe and ONLY teleglobe. to teleglobe's customers, it seems like i'm the internet :)
but if you're on verizon, you can't access it. then me telling you to complain to Verizon because you can't access my website :)

Re:So what is Sprint providing its customers?

[blhack]

Those machines are not on the internet, they connect to the internet.

Probably(hopefully) a troll, but I'll bite.

There is no "internet". There is only progressively smaller networks. The ISPs all own their own networks, they communicate with one another via an IBX, or a "meet-me-room". Your company's LAN is a network just like theirs, only smaller (well...depending on what company you work for..some can get to the size of a small ISP). The fact that you don't have an agreement with your ISP to route their traffic to your machines does not mean that they are not part of "the internet".

Think about it like this:

There is an office building, each floor is a separate company. Each company runs their own network. After a while, a couple of the companies decide that they should share information with one another, so they do. They connect their networks to one another and start routing between them. Things are good. Now a few more companies jump on board, before you know it, 40 out of the 50 networks in the building are all talking to one another. THAT is the internet.

Re:So what is Sprint providing its customers?

[Hadlock]

I think he's talking in a more general sense. But you are correct in that definition of the term!

Re:So what is Sprint providing its customers?

[m0e]

You'd probably want to check the SLA first. Most have provisions that don't apply to this, at least contractually. As an end-customer you'd be buying access to their public network -- if they choose to depeer or black hole another network, they're usually within the right to do that since THEY own the network you're connecting to. Bad business sense yeah, but otherwise it's probably not breaking any contractual agreement with a customer.

Re:So what is Sprint providing its customers?

[scoove]

Funny how history repeats itself, especially in Sprint's case. In 1996, Sean Doran (SprintLink senior network architect) decided CIX-W peering was no longer cool and dropped peering, causing one hell of a black hole. From my recollection, it was the first instance where open routing was disabled due to political or commercial objectives, and unfortunately for Sprint, it came at a time where Bob Collett (then head of SprintLink) was trying to promote Sprint's openness and participation in the community. Bob overruled his engineer and routing was restored several days later.

Since that point, BGP black holes have continued, usually to the detriment of customers. BBN Planet, Exodus and numerous others played the game presuming that content was more important than eyeballs or vice versa. The fallacy in their model is that content without consumer is as useless as consumer without content. Until they establish that understanding, neither unbalanced provider will succeed.

Re:So what is Sprint providing its customers?

[zappepcs]

No, you are NUTS!
Customers have a reasonable expectation of what services they are buying. If there is fine print or bait and switch tactics involved, or blatant disregard for service contract terms, there is legal reason to sue. In the USA we have lemon laws for cars and the same intent applies to everything in commercial business under the general terms of the law. Blatant theft of funds under the guise of contractual terms does not count. It may take time to prove it in court, but what I'm saying is true. Internet is NOT a vague term. Internet means what you get at your home PC screen. "Limited Internet" means something different. The promise of something good which is not delivered is just as wrong as snake oil salesmen that promise a cure. Obviously medical claims seem to fall under different rulings, but the intent of the law, and it's execution are the same. Fine print does not excuse you from delivering what your marketing group promised. ever.

Re:So what is Sprint providing its customers?

[ustolemyname]

I see now that I was wrong. Thank you for your excellent explanation.

Re:So what is Sprint providing its customers?

[Anonymous Coward]

As an end-customer you'd be buying access to their public network -- if they choose to depeer or black hole another network, they're usually within the right to do that since THEY own the network you're connecting to.
I'm willing to bet that Sprint describes their offering as internet access. If that's not what they're giving, it's either fraudulent misrepresentation or outright breach of contract.

Re:So what is Sprint providing its customers?

[Anonymous Coward]

But where are the tubes? And what happens when they fill up?

Re:So what is Sprint providing its customers?

[Ihmhi]

Can you write it again as a car analogy? I'm lost here.

Re:So what is Sprint providing its customers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't that like saying there is no PSTN? Nothing else you have said is incorrect. However, ISP's should have some responsibility to offer a predetermined level of service. I wonder what would happen if ATT got miffed at Verizon and decided to block all phone calls between the two networks.

Re:So what is Sprint providing its customers?

[Anonymous Coward]

That is an intranet or internet (your choice), it is not the Internet (notice the capital I).

Re:So what is Sprint providing its customers?

[SQLGuru]

You and everyone in your neighborhood has a car. You and that hot MILF down the street decide to install CB Radios so that your wife won't see you hooking up with the MILF by looking at your cell phone bill. That goes on for a while and then the MILF wants to set up a threesome with her best friend Jane, so Jane gets a CB, too. Eventually y'all progress to a huge orgy, so everyone in the neighborhood has a CB Radio. Now *THAT'S* the Internet (in more ways than one).

Layne

Re:So what is Sprint providing its customers?

[theaveng]

- Cancel your sprint.

- Return modem or whatever to sprint with tracking/DC.

- Call your credit card company. Chargeback the most-recent Sprint charge plus any other amounts they try to charge you. Provide the tracking as proof the modem was returned. (If credit card does not cooperate, payoff your balance, and cancel the card immediately.)

Re:So what is Sprint providing its customers?

[jafiwam]

SLA's typically cover "best effort" internet.

Yeah, stuff will go down and goobers will run into telephone poles and backhoes, oh the backhoes!

But, cutting off a huge network because your lawyer wanted to go on vacation when THE SHIT WOULD WORK HAD YOU NOT DELIBERATELY TURNED IT OFF.

That ain't "best effort", that's "dick move".

As such, it's breach of contract with every single one of their customers at once. It would be in their rights to all simply stop paying the bill, I wonder how long their cashflow would last? More than likely the VP or board or whatever would pull their head out of their asses and realize the back room IT guy that will likely hear about this has a big voice in the tech stuff companies buy... and they would fix it.

Re:So what is Sprint providing its customers?

[Directrix1]

Internet service has the implied meaning that given a public IP address, you should be able to contact any other public IP address without interference by a 3rd party. There are private networks and public networks. So what? If an entity wants to be a player in the internet game they need to be prepared to play by the rules. Or they should be stripped of their rights to participate in the network.

Re:So what is Sprint providing its customers?

[postbigbang]

And somehow, the FCC remains silent. Joy.

Re:So what is Sprint providing its customers?

[Toll_Free]

Your network is NAT'ed, therefore you only have 1 machine on the internet, assuming your gateway is an actual computer.

Nice try, though.

--Toll_Free

Re:So what is Sprint providing its customers?

[genner]

You and everyone in your neighborhood has a car. You and that hot MILF down the street decide to install CB Radios so that your wife won't see you hooking up with the MILF by looking at your cell phone bill. That goes on for a while and then the MILF wants to set up a threesome with her best friend Jane, so Jane gets a CB, too. Eventually y'all progress to a huge orgy, so everyone in the neighborhood has a CB Radio. Now *THAT'S* the Internet (in more ways than one).

Layne

Huh, you'd think I'd be getting some, with all the time I spend on the internet.

Re:So what is Sprint providing its customers?

[Have Blue]

"internet" used to be a technical term referring to a network assembled out of existing smaller networks while retaining the divisions between them in its topology. This was back when most LANs did not run IP natively and traffic that moved between LANs had to be encapsulated in IP by a special internetworking router called a gateway. As time passed one internet grew to contain practically all smaller networks in existence, and it became "the Internet". The usefulness of this sense of the term disappeared when most LANs started using IP, removing the need for the gateway and erasing many of the technical differences between LANs and internets (of which there was now only one in the world anyway).

Re:So what is Sprint providing its customers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Any publicly routable IP (Internet Protocol) address, leased from ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) is part of the Internet.

By the way, "Internet" is capitalized for a reason. Internet is not a term, it's a name.

Your inside machines presumably are on a private IP range that is NOT publicly routable, and therefore not part of the Internet. For that matter, even if you are using public IP addresses for your private network, it's good and right to protect your assets from unauthorized connections from the outside.

But it's not OK to deny paying customers access to IP address ranges outside your responsibility. Nor is it OK to deny paying customers access to their customers just because you have a dispute with another backbone provider.

Beyond that, this wasn't just a case of Sprint turning off a peering connection. They are putatively denying all traffic. Sprint could allow traffic to pass through public peering points where they have no agreements with Cogent.

Re:So what is Sprint providing its customers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, that's where the tubes are. Between the floors.

Re:So what is Sprint providing its customers?

[RulerOf]

Well... If using a CB radio means you're pleasuring yourself, then I guess that is the internet.

Re:So what is Sprint providing its customers?

[Anonymous Coward]

You and everyone in your neighborhood has a car. You and that hot MILF down the street decide to install CB Radios so that your wife won't see you hooking up with the MILF by looking at your cell phone bill. That goes on for a while and then the MILF wants to set up a threesome with her best friend Jane, so Jane gets a CB, too. Eventually y'all progress to a huge orgy, so everyone in the neighborhood has a CB Radio. Now *THAT'S* the Internet (in more ways than one).

And peering arrangements are when the hot MILF hooks up with the guy from college instead of you -- all of a sudden, even though you still have a car and a radio, you get no more MILF nooky, no more from her best friend Jane, none from any of her friends, and so your car sits in the driveway and you have to go back to your wife.

Um... I mean, "I don't understand your analogy. Please provide some illustrations. Or at least your favorite google image search results."

Re:So what is Sprint providing its customers?

[geekoid]

The more appropriate question the court is likely to want's answered is:

What is the reasonable expectation one has when they buy a service to connect with the internet?
And
What did Sprint say you could do on the 'Internet'?

Re:So what is Sprint providing its customers?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no "internet". There is only progressively smaller tubes. The ISPs all own their own tubes, they communicate with one another via an IBX, or a "I-want-to-tube-you" room. Your company's LAN is a tube just like theirs, only smaller (well...depending on what company you work for..some can get to the size of a small ISP).

There. Fixed it for you.

-- stj

Re:So what is Sprint providing its customers?

[MikeBabcock]

There is TOO an Internet -- those connected by publicly routable IP addresses via the AS's of the world. THE Internet frequently has routing black-holes, for a variety of reasons, but any ISP should be doing their best allow you to route packets to and from ANY of the other publicly routable ranges on that Internet. Otherwise, they wouldn't be "INTERNET service providers".

Your peers may not be accessible, even if on publicly routable addresses, for security reasons or whatnot, but they're still routable from anywhere else on the Internet -- accessibly or not.

Re:So what is Sprint providing its customers?

[MBGMorden]

Step 5: Watch Sprint send your now unpaid bill to collections agent as your credit score takes a tumble.

You can't always go all gung-ho and declare breach of contract, reverse charges, etc. Their contracts were drafted up by rather expensive lawyers and they generally are setup such that YOU are held to a lot, but they're not going to be liable for much. That's just the perks of having the lawyers available.

Reversing the charges also isn't a good idea. It's not an action that is free of repercussions.

Re:So what is Sprint providing its customers?

[Smauler]

And then that 400lb tattooed trucker drives past with his CB radio, and thing get _really_ interesting ;)

Re:So what is Sprint providing its customers?

[hey!]

From a consumer's point of view, he puts gas in his car's tank, then when he steps on the accelerator, his car engine goes faster. But in fact this is dependent on the fact that gasoline wants to follow a pressure gradient from the tank to the fuel injectors.

Now imagine you don't own "your" car. You lease it. Furthermore the car company doesn't own the pieces of the car, they lease them. So the fuel pump is legally owned by one company (A) and the fuel tank is legally owned by another (B), and those companies have a dispute.

Now imagine that company A can say, "OK, until company B accedes to our demands, our pumps are not going to pump any gas that comes out of a tank owned by company B."

Re:So what is Sprint providing its customers?

[Mikkeles]

I may not be be a networking engineer, but I know an internet when I see one.

(Hey, it works for pron and so-called community standards!)

Re:So what is Sprint providing its customers?

[profplump]

Technically that's *an* internet. It's only part of *the* Internet if it's also connected the global network.

Re:So what is Sprint providing its customers?

[Anonymous Coward]

How is this marked as 'insightful' ?

Re:So what is Sprint providing its customers?

[afidel]

Nah, telco/cellphone collections affect your credit score only slightly more than doctor bills do, ie not very much. The credit scoring companies know that those entities are about as likely as the customer to be responsible for billing problems. So long as you generally pay your bills ontime every month a single collection notice isn't going to change your score enough to affect your rates or ability to qualify for a loan. I do love how corporate America has convinced people that it's the end of the world if they don't pay every single bill justified or not.

Re:So what is Sprint providing its customers?

[PCM2]

Eventually y'all progress to a huge orgy, so everyone in the neighborhood has a CB Radio.

Except your wife. Your wife is Cogent Communications.

Re:So what is Sprint providing its customers?

[Danny Rathjens]

>> But what *IS* the internet?
> It's the largest equivalence class in the reflexive transitive
> symmetric closure of the relationship "can be reached by an IP
> packet from". --Seth Breidbart

I saved this from a NANOG post years ago. :) It might have even been in a discussion about previous cogent/level3 depeering games of chicken.

Re:So what is Sprint providing its customers?

[Anonymous Coward]

According to the 3 Sprint reps with whom I spoke, Sprint has not breached their contract as long as I can access *any* part of the Internet; therefore, I would be fined of $150 if I canceled my account with them.

BTW, none of the reps knew anything about the issue with Cogent and they certainly bristled when I said that they were "obviously ignorant of the situation".

Simply craptastic.

Re:So what is Sprint providing its customers?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't always go all gung-ho and declare breach of contract, reverse charges, etc. Their contracts were drafted up by rather expensive lawyers and they generally are setup such that YOU are held to a lot, but they're not going to be liable for much.

Actually, I complained about this to Sprint and convinced them that this service denial was having a severely detrimental effect on my ability to provide services to my clients and they agreed to waive the early termination fee on my contract. I have opted to give them, Cogent, and my web host a week in the, probably vain hope, that one of those parties will find some sort of resolution to this problem and Sprint has agreed that I will not have to pay any sort of termination fee. I had to speak to 3 customer reps until they escalated my support ticket and then someone with the authority to cancel the fees called me back.

I'm not saying that this will work for everyone, but it's worth a try.

Asshats

[seanadams.com]

I wonder how many customers these two companies will have to lose before they realize that the right solution is to sack the lawyers.

Re:Asshats

[Patchw0rk F0g]

Damn. No mod+ points left.

Re:Asshats

[da_matta]

Well, for Cogent this seems to be a standard practise, so I'd say not enough...

Re:Asshats

[Caetel]

Indeed

Re:Asshats

[Deadplant]

It is not Cogent's fault.
This is (yet again) a case of the incumbent telecoms companies having a hissy fit because Cogent's prices are so much lower than theirs.
They are trying to damage Cogent's reputation as a business tactic.

Re:Asshats

[Anonymous Coward]

In that case, Telia was intentionally routing Cogent customers' traffic across 2 continents because they couldn't compete with them on price. So Cogent pulled that move as a retaliatory strike.

Here we go

[nyu2]

This could be the beginning of serious balkanization of the internet. The value of the internet is that it connects EVERYTHING. Reduce the connections, and you reduce the utility.

Something is Fishy Here

[Darth Cider]

Sprint-Nextel and Clearwire go before the FCC on November 4 to seek approval for a merger. It seems very fishy that this Cogent story is breaking right now. Anybody have any ideas on why Sprint might pull a stunt like this as a means to GAIN FCC approval? Or is the story originating from a competitor? Just doesn't look right, especially with the price of Sprint stock scraping bottom lately, despite the huge influx of investment from Google and others. (Billions.) Somebody please explain.

Re:Something is Fishy Here

[nyu2]

Why look for hidden agendas, when simple stupidity and greed explain everything?

Re:Something is Fishy Here

[martinw89]

Have you been using the same Slashdot I've been on?

Re:Something is Fishy Here

[jamesh]

Have you been using the same Slashdot I've been on?

Maybe the Sprint/Cogent war has caused a partition in Slashdot too?

Re:Something is Fishy Here

[m0e]

Anybody have any ideas on why Sprint might pull a stunt like this as a means to GAIN FCC approval?

They're probably not. Sprint's wireless division isn't run by the same people as their transit network. It's most likely a case of left hand not knowing what the right is doing. If Cogent and Sprint are in litigation and Sprint decides to depeer or blackhole Cogent on their network because of that, it's most likely a decision made by upper management on the data transit infrastructure side and has nothing whatsoever to do with wireless.

I can bet you that the engineers assigned to do the work of depeering/blackholing probably think it's an utterly moronic thing to do... which is why they're not in management.

Re:Something is Fishy Here

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, it has happened. It is news. Reporting it isn't a conspiracy. http://internetpulse.net/ is displaying the connection between the two as being broken

Re:Something is Fishy Here

[Glendale2x]

Well, based on all the past depeering wars Cogent has been in and/or started, I'm leaning towards "Cogent is being a dick again". Especially since they're doing the exact same thing they did with Level3: offering customers of their competitor free service. The story is a press release from Cogent; it's completely one-sided. As I post this, there is no statement from Sprint.

Re:Something is Fishy Here

[Anonymous Coward]

You probably recall the famous protestations of SBC/AT&T's CEO that Google, et al, where using "our pipes" for free. Those comments were made at about the same time that SBC/AT&T acquisition closed. (Note: The Business Week article has a publication date in November. I don't know BW's practices per se, but it's quite reasonable to expect that the article was printed a week before that, and that it was written another week before that.)

I remember reading speculation that SBC wanted to misdirect regulators' attention -- their complaints were a straw-man intended to shift attention away from more sensitive issues. The FCC would balk at the straw-man; SBC and FCC would negotiate a settlement ("AT&T must stand by its current peering agreements!"); the FCC could walk away with the feeling that it achieved something; and SBC wouldn't have to negotiate real, sensitive issues.

Unfortunately, I don't remember where I read this theory, and I can't comment on its validity.

Re:Something is Fishy Here

[Dachannien]

Have you been using the same Slashdot I've been on?

I'm just amazed nobody's blamed the Bush administration yet.

Re:Something is Fishy Here

[ta bu shi da yu]

Sorry, I'll educate him. Simple greed and stupidity cause hidden agendas.

Re:Something is Fishy Here

[Anonymous Coward]

Posting as AC since I'm on my cellphone and logging in on Opera Mini is pretty flakey. I have Sprint EVDO, and I can attest that they're already fucking with data. DNS, for instance-- they intercept all DNS traffic and route it through their own DNS service. This is particularly irksome to me since I am a DNS administrator for a large multinational corporation. I work around it by SSH'ing into our colo facility and running queries there.

I'll be able to test this once I'm in the office since we have several Cogent drops at work. I'm already pissed about the DNS thing, so if I can use this as grounds for getting out of my EVDO contract, I'll do it.

Re:Something is Fishy Here

[Anonymous Coward]

I blame the Bush administration, but McCain will do better...really.

Re:Something is Fishy Here

[YetAnotherBob]

Explanation: OOPS

It never sounds that way in the later spun versions, but that's the way the world really works, just lurching from one horrible mistake to the next.

Business is like war. As General Sherman (American civil War) said, a battle is where two armies square off against each other. Each general sets his troops in order and anticipates the enemies actions. The last army to destroy itself wins.

Re:Something is Fishy Here

[Just Some Guy]

Exactly. And reading further, it looks like Sprint and Cogent signed a free peering agreement. Then, Cogent slashed prices to gain a bunch of customers, partially based on the fact that they now had cheap bandwidth via Sprint. Sprint realized that their peering traffic become way unbalanced and wanted to drop the free agreement.

You know, I can't say as how I blame them. If I agreed to split the cost of a meal with a salad eater and they turned around and ordered lobster, I'd be a little miffed. I certainly wouldn't want to continue that arrangement even if they protested that I'd already accepted it.

Re:Something is Fishy Here

[Anonymous Coward]

As I post this, there is no statement from Sprint.

It's Sprint. I doubt they've even noticed.

And anyone who bothers complaining? Well, they can just be fired. It's Sprint after all, they just don't care.

Re:Something is Fishy Here

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems like they've always been a shitty provider. I was diagnosing a network problem a couple years ago and the traceroutes were always reporting higher lag as soon as I hit their network.

Re:Something is Fishy Here

[Anonymous Coward]

That's particularly suspicious in view of Kevin Martin's evident desire to re-create the Internet in his own image and likeness.

Re:Something is Fishy Here

[petermgreen]

well a peering arrangement would only give them cheap bandwidth to sprints customers not to everyone else.

but anyway cogent is a wannabe tier 1. They don't buy transit but they do make use of paid peering arrangements. Add that to thier low prices which piss off the entrenched tier 1 providers and they are going to get into disputes over what if anything they should be paying for thier peering and if they de-peer thier single homed customers lose connectivity to whoever they de-peer with.

The bottom line is if you care about reliability don't be a single homed cogent customer.

How is this affecting others?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm on Comcast and can't connect to some RCN based networks (such as my university, located in DC). Is this related? The timing seems too coincidental.

Re:How is this affecting others?

[Anonymous Coward]

I, too, am one of 100 slashdotters who just happen to have a problem at this very moment.

Re:How is this affecting others?

[mbone]

Do a traceroute, see where the path is going and where it gets dropped. On a Unix or Mac CLI, that's just

traceroute

Or, if Comcast blocks this, go to a looking glass. Here is the
Cogent Looking glass, so you can trace backwards.

Re:How is this affecting others?

[chainLynx]

Also see traceroute.org to do a traceroute to anywhere from participating locations (although it's not immediately clear which ISP all of these sites are using). http://traceroute.org/#USA

Ow My Foot

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's pretty obvious that they're shooting themselves in the foot here, but I think this also begs the question: What defines internet access? Is it simply receiving an IP, or does it entail full access to the internet? Also how much disclosure do you need to give your customers as an ISP? Can you just say "Yea we offer internet access, but we wont tell you that you can only access 3 sites."

Re:Ow My Foot

[jimdread]

I think it's pretty obvious that they're shooting themselves in the foot here, but I think this also begs the question: What defines internet access?

No, the question is, is our children learning? Your sentence makes no sense to people who know what "begs the question" means. You seem to think it means "raises the question", but it doesn't. Begging the question is making a circular statement to support an argument. The statement relies upon itself as proof. For example, the statement "Global warming is terrible because it's really bad" is begging the question.

http://begthequestion.info/

Re:Ow My Foot

[Xtifr]

You, on the other hand, seem to think that just because there's a special meaning to "begs the question" when used without an object, that the words in that phrase lose their common everyday English meaning. Now, I'll grant you that the popularity of the somewhat awkward phrasing used by GP undoubtedly derives from the existence of the specialized meaning of the phrase in a specific context. Doesn't change the fact that the phrase obviously means exactly what he intended it to mean. Anyone who can actually read English and isn't obsessed with feeding their own ego by putting others down can see that with no problem.

Saying that common English words lose their everyday meaning when used in that particular order begs the question: why would they? Telling someone they're wrong because of your theory that these words have magically lost their ordinary meaning begs the question.

Re:Ow My Foot

[Curien]

Just beecuz leturz sumtymz hav speshul meeneengz duzent meen thae looz thayr regyoolar pronunsiashun eethur.

Re:Ow My Foot

[Covener]

No, the question is, is our children learning? Your sentence makes no sense to people who know what "begs the question" means. You seem to think it means "raises the question", but it doesn't.

You seem to know what "begs the question" means, yet somehow OP's idea has been conveyed to you via what I can only assume is some supernatural ether. Is there a latin phrase accepted by academics describing this phenomenon?

Re:Ow My Foot

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh goodness, next thing I know we are going to get a do poster do a meta analysis of relativistic meaning. How very post-modern that would be.

Re:Ow My Foot

[ThinkingIsContagious]

The problem is less that the modern use is unintelligible, and more that by using it, the original purpose of the phrase is not being associated with it any longer. The effect of allowing the phrase to degrade into ever broader meanings is the same as allowing a workman's tools to rust out in the rain, it deprives user's of the craft a necessary tool. Users of formal logic suffer from this misuse, not Joe the Plumber. Also, this "Saying that common English words lose their everyday meaning when used in that particular order begs the question: why would they? Telling someone they're wrong because of your theory that these words have magically lost their ordinary meaning begs the question." pains me deeply. You knew what you were doing there, and that's just plain mean.

Re:Ow My Foot

[Guysmiley777]

Exactly, if we can say "begging the question" means "asking the question" because many people are stupid, then why don't we just revert to pointing and grunts to communicate.

HAS THE WHOLE WORLD GONE CRAZY? AM I THE ONLY ONE HERE WHO GIVES A SHIT ABOUT THE RULES? MARK IT ZERO! - Walter Sobchak

Re:Ow My Foot

[Xtifr]

Why yes, interpreting words with their everyday meaning is sure to lead to a complete breakdown in our ability to communicate with each other. It probably leads to gay and interracial marriage too. :)

I'm pretty impressed with your post. At least three logical fallacies (begging the question, slippery-slope and a sort of generic ad-hominem) in one short sentence. Not too bad at all. But if you were really ambitious, you could probably have gotten in a few more. How about "my math professor insists that the only correct meaning for 'begging the question' is a circular argument" (appeal to irrelevant authority--math professors are not experts in English, and are, in fact, notorious for their ignorance on the topic). Or maybe "I saw the TV anchorman say 'begging the question' to introduce a question, and he's an idiot, so anyone who does that must be an idiot" (guilt by association). Heck, if you really wanted, I bet you could even Godwin the thread! :)

note to self

[Hes Nikke]

boycot sprint for fracturing the internet

Re:note to self

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been a Sprint wireless customer for over 8 years now. This pretty much changes that. I'll be looking elsewhere when my contract is up. It hasn't affected me directly, but when it eventually does I'll be up shit creek. No reason to wait until then.

Of course, instances like this and worrying about peering agreements always leaves me wondering: why can't we build some kind of national government owned backbone that all telcos link in to, just so we don't have to count *entirely* on peering agreements to keep traffic going? I'm not saying government needs control of the whole internet, I'd just like a chunk of it *not* controlled by corporate interests but instead operating with the supposed intent of looking out for citizens communicating with each other. Sure would be nice, but I guess I can only dream.

Re:note to self

[blhack]

I think what happened in Monticello, MN with the city laying down their own fiber when TDS telcom (the local telco) refused to is definitely a step in that direction...

Re:note to self

[Glendale2x]

What happens when Cogent gets bored with Sprint and gets bitchy with your new choice? This is not the first time Cogent has been in the same situation. Level3, TeliaSonera, and AOL come to mind. I wouldn't be so quick to blame Sprint based on a one-sided Cogent press release.

Re:note to self

[Anonymous Coward]

Why wait until your contract is up? Sprint doesn't currently deliver the service that they are obliged to supply. Call them now, tell them to fix it or cancel your contract.

Re:note to self

[OriginalArlen]

Nonsense. Boycott Cogent for sucking golf-balls through hosepipes. The people here who are framing Sprint as the bad guys really need to go read up on network engineering, because they don't know what they're talking about. Hint, others have de-peered Cogent in the past.

Re:note to self

[daniel_newby]

Of course, instances like this and worrying about peering agreements always leaves me wondering: why can't we build some kind of national government owned backbone that all telcos link in to, just so we don't have to count *entirely* on peering agreements to keep traffic going?

Let's define some words.

Peering: There are two networks. Each network is transmitting about the same amount of data to the other. They could pay each other for the service, but the amounts would be about equal, leading to little net income. Therefore they enter into a (difficult to audit or tax) peering agreement to exchange traffic for free. One hand washes the other. Until one hand stops washing.

Transit: Delivering data for a fee.

What Sprint has done is to withdraw from the peering agreement, dropping Cogent like a hot potato like so many of Cogent's other peers in the past. Cogent is probably being a net.buttmunch and refusing to successfully negotiate a transit contract, while shamelessly playing the victim card.

Re:note to self

[viridari]

Of course, what good is that fiber going to do if they find their network is in a BGP black hole with any one major ISP?

Re:note to self

[mdielmann]

I keep seeing your comments popping up cautioning that Cogent isn't necessarily the wronged party here. Besides the names of where it's happened before, do you have any information about those other events?
On the face of it, it seems easy to say, "Well, either Cogent is being a dick, or Level3, TeliaSonera, AOL, and now Sprint are being dicks. Given the options, that would seem to indicate that Cogent is the one being a dick." The problem with this thinking, though, is that there are a lot of dicks out there, and Cogent seems to be doing its damnedest to change the way telecom/Internet works, something market leaders never seem to like.

Re:note to self

[Deadplant]

Umm, I know something about network engineering... what's your point?
You cite past examples of other incumbent ISPs de-peering with Cogent...

show me an example of Cogent initiating a de-peering...

Sprint, just like the others is just trying to undercut a competitor that is kicking their ass.

WE need Cogent, they are forcing bandwidth prices down.
Sprint is just jealous because they can't sell 10Gb/s of transit for $40,000/month

Re:note to self

[lordkuri]

show me an example of Cogent initiating a de-peering...

http://gigaom.com/2008/03/14/the-telia-cogent-spat-could-ruin-web-for-many/

http://www.backbone-news.com/2008/03/18/cogenttelia-peering-dispute-update/

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?p=5015857

Would you like some ketchup on that crow before you eat it? ;-)

Re:note to self

[Deadplant]

You're right. I was on my way back to this thread to post a correction.
Though those three links are all about the same incident.

Re:note to self

[Anonymous Coward]

show me an example of Cogent initiating a de-peering...

http://gigaom.com/2008/03/14/the-telia-cogent-spat-could-ruin-web-for-many/

http://www.backbone-news.com/2008/03/18/cogenttelia-peering-dispute-update/

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?p=5015857

Would you like some ketchup on that crow before you eat it? ;-)

None of these are proof of Cognet initiating a de-peering. One is a press release from Telia saying Cognent are being pricks, One is from Cognet saying Telia are being pricks, and the other is a forum where people are discussing whether or not it is Telia or Cognet that are being pricks.

Re:note to self

[Glendale2x]

Believe, me the only reason I was awake last night was because I had to massage BGP communities to force traffic destined for Cogent over a SAVVIS circuit. More power to them for trying to change the pricing model; I know that's what I'm trying to do in my own sector. And I certainly would love to lower my bandwidth cost on "classic" carrier circuits like T3. I can tell you that as a Sprint BGP customer, there are routes to Cogent via others (like XO), but traffic back from Cogent was going into a black hole.

There's plenty of information out there about those other events, however I figured everyone reading is smart enough to look it up on their own i.e. go type "Cogent" and "Level3" into Google. I merely wanted to point out to the ADD crowd (that seems to have forgotten about Cogent's other depeering incidents) that this is not an isolated case. I'm not trying to defend Sprint or Cogent, and nor do I know who is at fault here. It's just eerily similar to their spat with Level3 at this point.

Re:note to self

[flosofl]

I think a small municipality, or even a decent sized city for that matter, would most likely get a transit connection instead of peering (as in purchase an upstream connections). Except for the largest of urban areas (such as a New York or Chicago), I doubt any city or county would be considered a Tier 1 provider and be attractive to any other Tier 1 for a peering agreement.

Re:note to self

[flosofl]

What Sprint has done is to withdraw from the peering agreement, dropping Cogent like a hot potato like so many of Cogent's other peers in the past. Cogent is probably being a net.buttmunch and refusing to successfully negotiate a transit contract, while shamelessly playing the victim card.

I'm guessing that Sprint (and in the past AOL and Level3) don't really consider Cogent a so-called Tier 1 network. Usually you see peering agreements between Tier 1 networks since the traffic between the two usually average 1:1, so it makes sense for one or both to negotiate a peering agreement.

I'd really like to know what the traffic levels are (in both directions). I bet that would shed a *ton* of light on why Sprint shut Cogent down. If it's close to 1:1, then Sprint is probably trying something shady. *However*, if Cogent's traffic to and through Sprint is greater than the reverse on a consistent basis, then Cogent is really trying to get something for nothing. In that case I wouldn't blame Sprint for trying to get out of the peering and have Cogent set up a transit connection.

Re:note to self

[Glendale2x]

This one just came across on NANOG: Wrestling With the Zombie: Sprint Depeers Cogent, Internet Partitioned

Re:note to self

[Anonymous Coward]

We did build a national network. Unfortunately, our government sold it to the highest bidder.

You paid for it, but now you have to rent it back. Genius, actually. How can I get in on a scam like that?

Re:note to self

[petermgreen]

I suspect if they have any sense they would do a mixture, free peering with any local ISPs, paid peering to the major ISPs and then transit for whatever is left.

Affecting other ISPs

[miniskunk]

Well that certainly explains why my latency shot up this afternoon. Cogent or Sprint are not my ISPs, however, their squabble has affected other ISPs fair access to the net. When I do trace routes latency jumps from about 20ms to 300-500ms when it hops to a cogent address or fails to get a response. Really puts a crimp in online gaming. >.

Re:Affecting other ISPs

[coolgeek]

I think it also explains why sales on the website of my family's business were cut in half today.

Re:Affecting other ISPs

[Matt867]

I've also noticed my latency TRIPLE based on pinging Google (from 30ms average to 100ms average). I've been checking my equipment for malfunctions for days and have been unable to find any. I use a small ISP that is not involved with Sprint or Cognet, I hope the FCC gets involved in this.

Neutrality

[Adrian Lopez]

This is what the world might look like without Net Neutrality.

Re:Neutrality

[TooMuchToDo]

Net neutrality can't force tier1/2 network carriers to peer.

Re:Neutrality

[Adrian Lopez]

If there exists no route from me to another server on the Internet and the reason that route doesn't exist is due to my ISP, I say that ISP has violated Net Neutrality. However, since as far as I know Net Neutrality currently has no legal definition, this is purely an issue of network ethics rather than an issue of law.

Re:Neutrality

[Tacvek]

In the spirit of Dune's "The Spice must flow!", It should be a firm rule that "The packets must route". Meaning that deliberately preventing packets from reaching their destination (excluding reasonable filtering policies) by a party other than the sender or recipient, or somebody acting on their behalf, is the worst possible Internet crime, and is in no way acceptable.

Re:Neutrality

[Breakfast Pants]

This isn't a case of Sprint just not peering is it? It sounds like they are blocking it entirely (e.g. even if their other peers peer through Cogent, you won't route through that peer when sprint doesn't provide a 1 hop path. e.g. Sprint is completely blackholing them). Is that a misunderstanding?

Re:Neutrality

[TubeSteak]

This is what the world might look like without Net Neutrality.

Oh please. Doesn't the internet route around damage?

Just because there isn't a straight line between Sprint and Cogent doesn't mean the internet is fucked.
Now all you low ping bastards are high ping bastards until the two companies kiss and make up.

Now if you can explain how exactly Net Neutrality will prevent corporate pissing contests, please do.
Otherwise -1 Overrated.

Re:Neutrality

[m0e]

Tier-1/2 transit providers have been depeering and blackholing each other since the the Internet's infancy. Sometimes over as little as a squabble between the two companys' engineers. Usually it gets resolved quickly ($$$). Sometimes it doesn't. Seems like a stupid thing to do IMO since it is doing nothing but hurting their customers.

[SprintCust] Hey, we can't get to (insert CompanyB web application -- important to SprintCust's business)
[SprintCust] *calls up CompanyB* Hey, is your application down? We're trying to do our business with you but we can't and we're losing a lot of money
[SprintCust] ...
[SprintCust] ...it's because of WHAT?
[SprintCust] FUCK SPRINT

Then multiply that by a number whose product will cause the irritation of some upper managers and this will finally end -- they'll at least route traffic to them if they don't re-peer. (in theory -- i never said Sprint was a rational company)

Re:Neutrality

[Anonymous Coward]

If routes don't currently exist between Sprint and Cogent, it probably has more to do with Cogent, despite the fact that Sprint is the one that turned off the peering session.

Cogent buys transit from others. They'd be getting routes to Sprint through their transit providers, unless they were deliberately filtering those routes. They've done that sort of filtering in the past, while playing "victim" of depeering by other networks, in order to avoid paying transit costs and to put pressure on their former peers to reconnect them.

Re:Neutrality

[FishWithAHammer]

Not when Sprint is actively blackholing and pretending that the data went through, as they are now.

Re:Neutrality

[Lennie]

Cogent does not buy transit [0] , they've become Tier 1, my guess is Sprint isn't happy with how much traffic is flowing over some connections and wants money (think: paid peering).

[0] http://www.renesys.com/blog/2008/06/cogent-becomes-transitfree.shtml

Re:Neutrality

[Lennie]

Yes, you are misunderstanding, there are 2 ways a provider gets access to other networks, 1 is transit, the other is peering. Transit is, you (A) get all routes a provider (B) has to there network and other networks it knows about. Peering is when you just get routes about there network (provider B) and there customers networks (the customers that buy transit from B).

Transit is the kind organisations pay for, peering is usually free, but doesn't have to be.

A provider is a Tier 1, when all they have is peering and still have a connection to all the whole internet.

Sprint and Cogent are both a Tier 1 providers (Cogent only since June or July or something), thus if you have an organisation that is only connected to one transit-provider and it's one of them, you now don't have routes to the other anymore.

Organisations that buy transit should always connect to several transit-providers, Tier 1 or otherwise. Otherwise you didn't need all the extra stuff: BGP, ASN, dealing with routers, dealing with routes, etc.

Anyone organisation that is stupid enough to only connect to one Tier 1 provider is dumb, because that provider doesn't have any other peering or transit if a problem like this emerges.

The reason these problems exist, is because Cogent pretty much has the lowest prices in the industry, not just the Tier 1, but all of them.

So when you buy transit from Cogent, also buy from others. In general terms: atleast get 2 transit providers, always (unless of course you are large enough to be a Tier 1-provider). Otherwise it's like a single point of failure and you could just have gotten yourself a 'normal' internet connection.

Re:Neutrality

[OriginalArlen]

What, you mean I'm allowed to decide who connects to my network, because it's MINE and I run it how *I* want to?!? What a nightmare scenario that would be. Thank goodness we live in a People's Democratic Socialist Republic, where resources are allocated by committees rather than markets.

Re:Neutrality

[TubeSteak]

Not when Sprint is actively blackholing and pretending that the data went through, as they are now.

Is Net Neutrality (TM) going to prevent that specific type of corporate asshattery?
How exactly should that part of the law/regulation be worded?

As for your claim that the internet won't route around this damage... why not? [ISP] should be aware of what's going on and they should update their routing accordingly. I realize that dealing with something like this essentially requires immediate total cooperation from a lot of people at once, but such is the nature of distributed ownership of internet infrastructure.

The world sure as shit noticed when Pakistan accidentally black holed Youtube.
That problem got fixed right quick.

Re:Neutrality

[jafiwam]

BGP will automatically route around this "damage".

Note however, in some cases there IS only one route. There are not major backbone lines running along every interstate and state highway like you seem to think.

Sometimes, the data would need to cross an ocean for the "other" route, which works for smaller amounts of data, but not two companies worth of peering points.

Re:Neutrality

[SanityInAnarchy]

If I recall, the protagonist of Dune (and the guy who won in the end) was the one who had the balls to say, "If I am not obeyed, the spice will not flow."

Let's not follow that book. I don't look forward to God-Emperor Sprint.

Re:Neutrality

[SanityInAnarchy]

Is Net Neutrality (TM) going to prevent that specific type of corporate asshattery?

Well, yes. Net Neutrality is about not prioritizing, filtering, blocking, or mangling traffic, but letting it through to where it's meant to go.

Pretty simple, really.

Re:Neutrality

[Tacvek]

I intended us not to look at it from that angle, but from the angle that The routing of packets is paramount. That does not mean we have to give in to blackmail, even by the "good guys", mostly because packet routing is slightly less critical than spice flow, and it is hard to get into a position where one really can blackmail the universe.

Re:Neutrality

[TooMuchToDo]

Bingo. Sprint shut down peering to Cogent across their network, even though litigation is still ongoing.

Re:Neutrality

[TooMuchToDo]

So, let's assume your a Cogent customer (as I am, we purchase several Gb/sec of connectivity from them for multihoming) and Sprint all of a sudden pulls the rug out from under Cogent. Am I to tell Cogent, "Connect me back to Sprint at all costs!"? No. I pay Cogent for a certain level of service, and no carrier or network out there guarantees you will be able to reach the entire internet (welcome to "best effort"). If you want that functionality, be prepared to multihome, and pay for it.

Re:Neutrality

[TooMuchToDo]

I take issue with this part of your post:

Anyone organisation that is stupid enough to only connect to one Tier 1 provider is dumb, because that provider doesn't have any other peering or transit if a problem like this emerges.

My company has consulted with some Fortune 500/5000 companies, and when we provide them with options, they in most cases go for the Cogent option. You say it's dumb for going with only one Tier 1 provider. My clients would strongly disagree with you. You may have the requirement to have access to the full net, but they would rather have super-dirt cheap connectivity and the occasional partitioning problem (i.e. Sprint, Level3, etc) then pay the much higher bandwidth prices from other Tier 1 providers. Why? Partitioning doesn't last forever.

Re:Neutrality

[Shadowlore]

"If there exists no route from me to another server on the Internet and the reason that route doesn't exist is due to my ISP, I say that ISP has violated Net Neutrality"

And you could be wrong, too. There may be solid technical reasons behind it, or business reasons that have nothing to do with "neutrality". Net Neutrality is not about who you peer with, it is about how you treat traffic. Network peering is an electronic version of individual association.

Re:Neutrality

[compro01]

I could hopefully prevent them from blackholing each other, which is effectively sabotage, as it makes it look like the link is still working fine, when all traffic is actually being dumped to /dev/null. If you want to stop peering, fine, unplug the lines. But make it known so systems can easily route around the damage.

Re:Neutrality

[electrictroy]

I'm sorry but... ...why must I, a network company, provide service to a deadbeat customer who is a year behind in payments? I disagree with your thought process that I must provide service w/o pay...... same as I would not work for my boss without paycheck.

Headline is wrong

[soundguy]

Cogent runs the second largest tier-1 backbone on the planet and it is widely used by the adult industry. The headline should read:

Sprint cockpunches own customers by disconnecting them from porn.

/I run a few dozen porn servers on Cogent links

//Sprint can suck my balls

Re:Headline is wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

/I run a few dozen porn servers on Cogent links

Pics or it didn't happen!

Re:Headline is wrong

[calmofthestorm]

//Sprint can suck my balls

Pics or it didn't happen!

Re:Headline is wrong

[cypher073]

Actually, Cogent doesn't run a tier-1 network at all. Because they paid and settlement-based peering with at least some other networks, they're technically tier-2. Cogent has a long history of being cut off -- French Telecom, AOL, Level 3, and several others over the years have disconnected them for various reasons.

Re:Headline is wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

cockblocks*

Re:Headline is wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what she said!

(OMFG no one will believe me but my word image is seriously 'erector')

Re:Headline is wrong

[soundguy]

AOL repeered with Cogent something like a year ago. They were the last holdout and once that happened, Cogent was no longer paying anyone for transit and were therefore a full tier-1. Regardless of their peering status, they own and operate the second largest capacity network in the world. Traceroutes over the last couple of years would seem to indicate that they are servicing a fairly large number of eyeball networks in Europe these days as well as content networks all over the world. They are now sitting at the grownup's table and are no longer just a "discount" provider.

Re:Headline is wrong

[greg1104]

Sprint can suck my balls

They can't reach them because you're on a Cogent link.

Re:Headline is wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

2 sprints. 1 cup!

Re:Headline is wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

//Sprint can suck my balls

That would solve your porn problem I suppose.

Re:Headline is wrong

[Deadplant]

"...and several others over the years have disconnected them for various reasons."

Which all boiled down to: "We don't want you as a tier-1 competitor because your business model kicks our business model's ass."

Re:Headline is wrong

[chainLynx]

Isn't the whole internet widely used by the adult industry?

This is not new

[phillipsjk256]

When my local phone company was having a labour dispute, they blocked the union website. Granted, this incident appears to be on a much larger scale.

My ISP at the time (Interbaun, recently bought by Uniserve) was also affected: They resell the Telus ADSL sevice (because the phone company owns the lines).

http://thetyee.ca/News/2005/08/04/TelusCensor/

According to the link I Dug up, it was back in 2005.

Re:This is not new

[cperciva]

When my local phone company was having a labour dispute, they blocked the union website.

That is true, but leaves out some rather important details -- like the fact that the blocked website contained photos, addresses, and phone numbers of company managers and of workers who decided to cross the picket lines, and encouraged harassment of said individuals; and that threats of violence had been made against those managers and workers.

I'm not saying that Telus was right in blocking the website, but this wasn't merely a labour dispute.

Re:This is not new

[phillipsjk256]

True, but the linked story explains that. I also neglected to mention that ~700 other websites were also affected.

Re:This is not new

[geekoid]

So they acted to censor publicly available information?

Cogent depeering

[greg1104]

Why does this story sound familiar...right, because I've heard it twice before. In 2003 it was AOL who cut them off, then in 2005 Level 3 did the same thing.

While it seems Sprint is to blame here, when I see Cogent on the bad end of this so many times I can't help but wonder how many of these problems are brought on by their own management. It's not too often you get to see a pair of N/A results on the health report, but as you can read that's exactly what happened in 2005 as well.

Re:Cogent depeering

[Anonymous Coward]

There was also a depeering incident between Cogent and Telia earlier this year.

Cogent was the one to pull the plug in that case, but it doesn't really matter -- it got pulled because Cogent had a dispute with one of its peers, and they no longer found it mutually beneficial to interconnect. Cogent finds itself in these kinds of situations disproportionately often.

Re:Cogent depeering

[J Isaksson]

Also, the other way around; they cut Telia off not that long ago.

Re:Cogent depeering

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia, slang testing fucks you!

Re:Cogent depeering

[OriginalArlen]

Yes, well spotted, they ARE brought on by Cogent's own management. You seem to have some idea what you're talking about, are you sure you're on the right site?

begging for more regulation

[Anonymous Coward]

they're just begging for a senate hearing on consumer rights violations, leading to more regulation. really just shooting themselves in the foot here.

empty threats

[SuperBanana]

I thought I was buying a DIA circuit - as in Direct Internet Access - but apparently you don't exactly do that. That's a breach of contract - that's a violation of your SLA - I want out of my contract now

Sprint's reply: "Okay *flip*. Call us when you realize that getting a T1/T3 takes weeks. By the way, we charge a $1000 installation fee."

Re:empty threats

[Alioth]

Why does getting a T1/T3 in the USA take so long? When we got an equivalent circuit from our local telecoms provider, it was like "Is this Friday OK for installation?"

Re:empty threats

[raju1kabir]

I've gotten T1s pulled up in a matter of days in the USA. Maybe it just takes Sprint that long.

Re:empty threats

[dreamchaser]

Getting a T1 or T3 might have taken weeks several years ago. The last few times I've had any setup it was done within a week, sometimes within days.

Re:empty threats

[eric2hill]

We signed up with Qwest for 10 installations of MPLS across the globe. The domestic (US) sites were dropped in a matter of a few days. The international sites took well over a month.

It's all a matter of perspective.

Re:empty threats

[nahdude812]

My guess is that it would depend on how much fiber they have to run. If there's available nearby connectivity, it could be quick. If not, it could take a while.

Non-fiber lines tend to be quicker because they typically attach to infrastructure which is already very nearby. Of course you lose the SLA on those lines.

Re:empty threats

[afidel]

It largely depends on your LEC (local exchange carrier) IE the people who own the physical lines. With AT&T they have the attitude "yeah we're the phone company, what are you going to do about it?". With CLEC's (like COVAD) they simply don't have enough techs to do installs that quickly.

Re:empty threats

[afidel]

We do lines all over the western hemisphere and the average guaranteed install date is 30-45 days from order to working line. That's when there's no issues, if you have a building that requires proof of insurance or trade recognition it can easily take several months to get the paperwork filled and the lawyers to sign off.

Re:empty threats

[parc]

It all depends on existing facilities. If you don't have transport available already or if the available transport needs to be qualified before install, it'll take longer.

As far back as 2001 I had circuits that would come up in hours and circuits that would come up in weeks, all from the same provider. The only difference was the availability of qualified circuits (or qualified people to turn the circuits up).

Re:empty threats

[Lord Apathy]

It also depends on who you know and who you are. When my company wanted to have some lines activated, the physical lines where available, to one our branches bellsouth told us it would take 2 to 3 weeks to get it done. The where not going to budge on it ether, 2 week min, and all that had to be done was some paper work and switch flipped.

A call the same day from our parent corp. that owns a shit load of bellsouth stock had the line turned on in an hour.

Re:empty threats

[QuantumRiff]

at one company I worked at, in order to move above a T-1 (dot com days), they had to replace all their equipment in the street side cabinet, and then run a Fiber all the way across town to the central switch, (had copper running through conduits, so they had to run fiber down the pipes too, thank god they didn't need to trench!) where they were out of circuits, and had to order more equipment. It was a small town.

Re:empty threats

[stonecypher]

Generally speaking, you can get a T1 in most major metros same-day with a $200 or so extra fee. Telcos sell that kind of bump for people whose physical lines have severed; waiting weeks can kill some businesses.

Re:empty threats

[Anonymous Coward]

Sprint's reply: "Okay *flip*. Call us when you realize that getting a T1/T3 takes weeks. By the way, we charge a $1000 installation fee."

Actually, if you're on-net with Cogent, you'd be surprised at how quickly they'll drop a circuit to you. I was.

Re:empty threats

[darkpixel2k]

I thought I was buying a DIA circuit - as in Direct Internet Access - but apparently you don't exactly do that. That's a breach of contract - that's a violation of your SLA - I want out of my contract now

Sprint's reply: "Okay *flip*. Call us when you realize that getting a T1/T3 takes weeks. By the way, we charge a $1000 installation fee."

After I talked w/ my sales rep earlier today, my new response is: "Ok Sprint, have it your way. I'm calling Comcast. Oh--you didn't hear they just upgraded their local network? Yeah, it's called DOCSIS 3.0. Oh--and within the next 30 days they will be providing 50 Mb down, 20 Mb up service. Oh--and it's less than your f*cking T1. Hell--it's less than most ISDN service."

"Oh yeah--I could also get 'guaranteed' T1 speed from them for about $100/mo--so f*ck you Sprint. F*ck you and your $1,000 fee."

Re:empty threats

[dreamchaser]

Then you're doing it wrong. I've dealt with all the major carriers many times and I've never had to wait that long for a line to be provisioned.

Re:empty threats

[Anonymous Coward]

A DIA circuit IS! a T1 or T3 line!

Guess what?

[caitsith01]

Lawyers don't cause litigation. Parties cause litigation.

IAAL. The matters which go to court are the ones where the parties are unreasonable, overly aggressive, or genuinely have a dispute about something which is worth money to both of them. It may also amaze you to learn that sometimes parties actually do breach contracts or otherwise fuck one another over, and yet when caught out they don't automatically roll over and return what they owe to the person they have wronged.

I have no influence whatsoever over whether they end up in Court. I advise my clients about their rights and prospects, and follow their instructions.

On the whole, reasonable, intelligent parties = no ligitation = no lawyers.

Re:Guess what?

[phantomfive]

Actually, that (interesting) post is an excellent example of why people don't like lawyers. "It is the wish of my client." It's the whole cool, clear, collected "I will crush you and will have no bad conscience about it because I can blame someone else" attitude. Lawyers don't cause litigation? Do you know what an ambulance chaser is?

Now granted, you may not be that type of lawyer, but there is a reason the devil is sometimes portrayed as a lawyer. Take responsibility for your actions and you will become more powerful than any average lawyer. You can't always blame the other guy.

Re:Guess what?

[n3tcat]

I dunno... darth vader became pretty powerful by *not* taking responsibility for his actions.

Re:Guess what?

[Darby]

Lawyers don't cause litigation. Parties cause litigation.

Lawyers, however, enable litigation. In fact, for some lawyers, that *is* their business. You can talk in abstractions all you like, but the main difference between mathematicians and lawyers is that the mathematician's love for bizarre, pedantic arguments stays in the ivory towers. Lawyers do the same thing having massively damaging affects on the real world. Sure, some douche hired a lawyer to push some ludicrous case, and he's a douche. No argument there, but when a lawyer who's good enough at his trade argues a bullshit case convincingly that can change the way the law is applied to everyone in incredibly destructive ways. Take the mockery that's been made of the interstate commerce clause alone. Bad lawyers doing bad things that has cost the country incalculable amounts of money, integrity and damn near anything else you'd care to mention.

On the whole, reasonable, intelligent parties = no ligitation = no lawyers.

But your calculation is incomplete. Why aren't the ridiculous cases refused? Because while *you* might possess ethics, there are plenty of people who don't. Some of those people are lawyers. So even if the rest of the people were sane and decent, the sleazebag lawyers would be chasing those ambulances and working to convince the weak willed and stupid that they're owed. That's how they make a living, after all.

They also would work to arrange new ways of creating conflicts. That's just basic common sense, coupled with a society which puts profit above all and in which buying the better lawyer buys the better "justice".

Re:Guess what?

[Kokuyo]

In my opinion, it's the judge's job to see through the big words and recognize a ludicrous case for what it is.

That's not to say that the lawyer doesn't have a lack of ethics, but the responsibility lies with the judge since he or she is the one to actually decide.

Re:Guess what?

[Darby]

In my opinion, it's the judge's job to see through the big words and recognize a ludicrous case for what it is.

But it doesn't even get to the judge (generally) until a lawyer has taken it on, made up arguments to sell it etc.
The judge has ultimate responsibility while the lawyer is already on the clock, having completely rejected his (assuming an actual ludicrous case here) responsibility to the law in favor of the dollar.

All you're doing is basically the same thing as the religious and the Dem/Rep big government Nanny/Nazi state types do. Push the responsibility uphill until it gets big enough to roll down on your head.

Hot tip, in most conflicts, both sides are wrong. In the case of stupid laws, prosecutions, or defenses, the Judge is wrong for allowing it and the lawyer is wrong for taking the case.

Re:Guess what?

[Richard_at_work]

Lawyers, however, enable litigation. In fact, for some lawyers, that *is* their business. You can talk in abstractions all you like, but the main difference between mathematicians and lawyers is that the mathematician's love for bizarre, pedantic arguments stays in the ivory towers. Lawyers do the same thing having massively damaging affects on the real world.

You fail to realise that litigation would still happen even if lawyers didn't exist, it would just take a more painful and bloody route. In other words, lawyers don't enable anything, they are a product of what is already there.

Re:Guess what?

[machine321]

Lawyers don't cause litigation. Parties cause litigation.

Guns don't kill people, bullets kill people.

Re:Guess what?

[ozphx]

If only I had mod points sir, I would give you them.

Re:Guess what?

[Anonymous Coward]

But they make it easier to litigate.

Your assuming that people will "litigate" regardless of the method or inconvenience involved.

Call a lawyer or take your bloody revenge. Which one can you do sat behind your desk in a comfy chair? And that won't land you in jail?

Similarly guns make it easier to kill people, pull a trigger from 20ft or grapple hand-to-hand?

You argument is basically Lawyers don't sue people, People sue People. And is as weak as the gun argument.

Re:Guess what?

[GospelHead821]

I believe that with regard to prosecution of crimes and civil litigation, the mentality that you describe is probably the result of wanting to give aggrieved parties their day in court. Some cases may appear cut-and-dry, but aren't; looking at events in retrospective makes it easy for us to judge unfairly. If judges agree to hear cases that turn out to be absurd, I suspect it is because they believe, as I do, that it is better to err on the side of making the process of law available than to err on the side of making it immune to mockery.

Re:Guess what?

[ozphx]

The judge has ultimate responsibility while the lawyer is already on the clock, having completely rejected his (assuming an actual ludicrous case here) responsibility to the law in favor of the dollar.

And assuming the judge rules 100% fairly, we are now costing sue-happy clients money. Eventually they would run out. The true ambulance chasers (no-win-no-fee) would also be going broke if the judges got their shit together.

First rule of business. "You get paid". It applies across all fields - when I consult if someone asks me to spec out a crazy stupid idea - once they are aware of the risks of it not actually being profitable... someone has to take their money. I'd prefer that person to be me. Rule #1.

Re:Guess what?

[Aladrin]

"is that the mathematician's love for bizarre, pedantic arguments stays in the ivory towers."

You've obviously never had a mathematician over for dinner.

Re:Guess what?

[MadMidnightBomber]

Lawyers don't cause litigation. Parties cause litigation.

Especially parties where the lawyers have one too many hits on the crack pipe.

Re:Guess what?

[darkfire5252]

Lawyers don't cause litigation. Parties cause litigation.

Lawyers, however, enable litigation. [...] Because while *you* might possess ethics, there are plenty of people who don't. Some of those people are lawyers. So even if the rest of the people were sane and decent, the sleazebag lawyers would be chasing those ambulances and working to convince the weak willed and stupid that they're owed. That's how they make a living, after all.

I call bullshit. Think your argument through a bit... Lawyers enable litigation. Unethical lawyers pursue unethical cases for their (or their client's) unfair gain. 'Sleazebag' lawyers convince weak willed people to do things beneficial to the lawyer.

Ok, so lets get rid of all the lawyers! However, we want a peaceful society, so lets keep the laws. In that case, we want to give people fair trials, so let's keep the courts. Great! Now we have laws, courts, judges, but no lawyers! Society will run just fine. Let's look at what would happen then...

Society enables litigation. Unethical members of society pursue unethical cases for their (or their employer's) unfair gain. 'Sleazebag' members of society convince weak willed people to do things beneficial to the sleazebag. The unethical members of society take it upon themselves to gain a good knowledge of how the law works. Their victims have no readily available access to anyone knowledgeable about the law and are easily taken advantage of.

Re:Guess what?

[Richard_at_work]

When was the last time you saw a lawyer sue someone without a client stood right by him? It doesn't happen - there is always a client (although in an extremely small number of cases that client and that lawyer are one and the same). So no, my argument is not weak but your weaseling is.

Re:Guess what?

[Anonymous Coward]

If it's gonna be that kind of party, I'm gonna stick my dick in the mashed potatoes.

Re:Guess what?

[rs79]

"but there is a reason the devil is sometimes portrayed as a lawyer."

Can we change that to Republican governor from Alaska instead then?

Re:Guess what?

[debrain]

Lawyers, however, enable litigation. In fact, for some lawyers, that *is* their business. You can talk in abstractions all you like, but the main difference between mathematicians and lawyers is that the mathematician's love for bizarre, pedantic arguments stays in the ivory towers. Lawyers do the same thing having massively damaging affects on the real world. Sure, some douche hired a lawyer to push some ludicrous case, and he's a douche. No argument there, but when a lawyer who's good enough at his trade argues a bullshit case convincingly that can change the way the law is applied to everyone in incredibly destructive ways. Take the mockery that's been made of the interstate commerce clause alone. Bad lawyers doing bad things that has cost the country incalculable amounts of money, integrity and damn near anything else you'd care to mention.

I am a lawyer (a litigator, specifically) and a mathematician, so I question your dichotomy between the two. To over-generalize the contributions of one profession or the other on society is specious. To rebut your bald statement about the destructive nature of lawyers, it's worth noting that lawyers are responsible for: creating civil liberties such as the right for women and the right for 'colored' people to vote and attend school with white people; writing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; defending Galileo Galilei when he published a "truth" (mathematics) when the church persecuted him for challenging their proprietary access to absolute "truth". As a generalization, mathematicians contributed to the discovery of the atomic bomb, and every other weapon ever created. More accurately, both have positive and negative effects on society (though economists might argue that because more lawyers are employed than mathematicians and generally better remunerated, they by definition have a more positive effect on society; the counter-argument is that they, like big corporations, rent-seek, vis-a-vis Ann Kruger's thesis)

Further, litigation is convincing a state (which has a monopoly on legal force) that they should enact legal force in your favour. Lawyers don't enable litigation as a form of enforceable dispute resolution, the rule of law does (i.e. the grant of state monopoly over legal force). What are the alternatives? Vigilantism? As well, the vast, vast, vast majority of lawyers don't practice any form of litigation. Only barristers (i.e. counselors-at-law) litigate; around 90% o lawyers practice as solicitors (attorneys-at-law) and never see the inside of a courtroom.

Finally, some attribute the commerce clause (and WTO/GATT-like reductions in interstate discriminatory trade practices) with the creation of more wealth in the United States than any other law in the US federation. I believe Thatcher argued that it was civil liberties. I imagine it was a combination of those two.

But your calculation is incomplete. Why aren't the ridiculous cases refused? Because while *you* might possess ethics, there are plenty of people who don't. Some of those people are lawyers. So even if the rest of the people were sane and decent, the sleazebag lawyers would be chasing those ambulances and working to convince the weak willed and stupid that they're owed. That's how they make a living, after all.

Points relevant:
1. The vast, vast majority of lawyers are ethical and have ethical clients, and to deny these people legal representation is to deny them access to justice;
2. It is unethical to deny legal representation to someone just because you do not agree with their position - it is the duty of legal counsel to advise them why you believe their position is wrong;
3. Defending a position is not the same as agreeing with it- unpopular positions (e.g. insurance companies defending against injured people making claims) have important functions (i.e. keeping insurance rates low, preventing fraud ---- fraud on insurance companies is a much, much, much bigger problem than fraud by insurance com

Re:Guess what?

[Zymergy]

Actually, it is more precisely: "Guns and Bullets don't kill People, PEOPLE kill people".
(The Gun and Bullets are merely tools in the hand of man)
It is not the hammer that causes the busted thumb, but the person swinging it...

Re:Guess what?

[himself]

caitsith01 wrote, "Lawyers don't cause litigation. Parties cause litigation."

Say, is that anything like "Guns don't kill people, people kill people"?

Re:Guess what?

[YouWantFriesWithThat]

thank you for this sensible, articulate, and well written rebuttal to the constant lawyer bashing. maybe some of their opinions would change if they ever found themselves in the need of legal representation.

Re:Guess what?

[genner]

Take responsibility for your actions and you will become more powerful than any average lawyer. You can't always blame the other guy.

Nope, if you can't blame the other guy you don't have a case.

Re:Guess what?

[pootypeople]

You're wrong, and very much so. Bringing up "ambulance chasers" in the context of legal disputes between corporations is particularly nonsensical. Most large corporations either have legal departments or contracted legal assistance.

What's this "average lawyer" you're talking about? If he's the actual "average" lawyer, he's not involved in litigation primarily. He fills out bankruptcy and divorce paperwork and settles all of his cases out of court.

In cases of litigation between companies (like the topic at hand), the poster is correct. The dispute arises because someone is unreasonable or underinformed, and the lawyers do their job. Their job is to represent their client, whether they are wrong or right.

Re:Guess what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Jack Thompson

Re:Guess what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Lawyers don't cause litigation. Parties cause litigation.

True. Parties bring all the ingredients to the legal soup, but some lawyers will not stop mixing and turning up the heat on that legal soup until it ("it" in this case meaning a clients money) has all but evaporated.

IAAL. The matters which go to court are the ones where the parties are unreasonable, overly aggressive, or genuinely have a dispute about something which is worth money to both of them.

Ah, yup. That's pretty much the entire reason they're in court. Money. Greed.

I have no influence whatsoever over whether they end up in Court. I advise my clients about their rights and prospects, and follow their instructions.

Consider yourself one of the few these days who side on what is right rather than what maximizes your vested interest

On the whole, reasonable, intelligent parties = no ligitation = no lawyers.

Wow. I believe it was the 40s or 50s when I can recall the last time we used the words reasonable within the confines of any level of litigation.

The highest parties in our lands are not reasonable or intelligent for the most part. Common F. Sense died years ago. Has he come back from the dead?

Re:Guess what?

[poot_rootbeer]

Why aren't the ridiculous cases refused?

Because our judicial system is based on the premise that a jury of laypeople, not a lawyer, should decide whether a claim is ridiculous or not?

Re:Guess what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoosh! The point of the argument passes you by, Dick.

It's almost axiomatic that when there's a lawyer there's a client. Similarly, when was the last time you saw a gun fire without someone squeezing the trigger?

But does the lawyer affect the conversion rate from grievance to court case? The escalation. Whispering in their ear that they'll finally get what they're entitled too.

It's the same with guns, an argument turns into a bloodbath. The ease of gun use encourages people to take it further.

That's weaselling?? You're missing the bigger picture dude.

Re:Guess what?

[mdielmann]

Translation: As a lawyer (working in a courtroom setting), be prepared to deal with more asshats than the typical person.
I think I'll stick with my job(programmer), and work with people who generally don't have a clue about technology. And, of course, hope fervently that I never need a lawyer in a courtroom setting, because then I might be the asshat in the situation.

Re:Guess what?

[Anonymous Coward]

They also would work to arrange new ways of creating conflicts.

You mean like the $112 Billion per year divorce industry?

Reference: http://center.americanvalues.org/?p=74

Re:Guess what?

[wvmarle]

]

On the whole, reasonable, intelligent parties = no ligitation = no lawyers.

Remarkable quote from a lawyer. I think a lot of your services include preventing the court case, as in negotiating a settlement between parties. Or even simply explaining the law and how they stand within the law or a contract. So even without litigation these reasonable, intelligent parties will need lawyers.

And then there are the cases where a contract between parties is not clear in the dispute, or the law is not clear or not well defined in a certain case. That's where the courts come in play. It's a necessary evil.

Re:Guess what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you know what an ambulance chaser is?

Do you know what tort reform is?

Re:Guess what?

[wvmarle]

Next time remember to not have that dinner in your ivory tower then, problem solved!

Re:Guess what?

[Anonymous Coward]

And most programmers will vociferously denounce those people. And if there was a professional organization ala the bar, IMO there are good odds those programmers would find themselves running afoul of it.

Don't see that sort of concern about their public image from most lawyers. And my mom was one.

Re:Guess what?

[MikeBabcock]

+1: Insightful and unfortunately misunderstood

Re:Guess what?

[MikeBabcock]

It is, and its true.

If you don't like people killing people with guns, don't give them guns.

If you don't want people suing people, don't give them lawyers.

Of course, the people without lawyers would probably find guns instead.

Re:Guess what?

[Darby]

To over-generalize the contributions of one profession or the other on society is specious.

I'm not over generalizing, or even generalizing at all. A Mathematician pursuing his profession doesn't radically alter the structure of society. Engineers and physicists are more likely to. A Lawyer pursuing his profession can and sometimes does, often for the worse.

To rebut your bald statement about the destructive nature of lawyers, it's worth noting that lawyers are responsible for: creating civil liberties such as the right for women and the right for 'colored' people to vote and attend school with white people; writing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; defending Galileo Galilei when he published a "truth" (mathematics) when the church persecuted him for challenging their proprietary access to absolute "truth".

It was a bald statement, but not an absolute one. Your rebuttal fails, though, when you consider that there were lawyers arguing against all of those civil liberties and the rest. Those people *are* scum.

Finally, some attribute the commerce clause (and WTO/GATT-like reductions in interstate discriminatory trade practices) with the creation of more wealth in the United States than any other law in the US federation.

The interstate commerce clause as it was intended is great, but I obviously wasn't talking about that which is why I spoke of the mockery which has been made of it. All the various farm welfare programs, drug laws and the like are all justified by the sleazy, entirely unjustifiable interpretation of it to mean that the government can do anything to anyone anywhere since anything could possibly have an affect on some form of commerce.
That was a scumbag lawyer who pushed that bullshit through may he burn in hell.

With your position, no one would ever have challenged segregation in the Southern US, the right for women to vote, the right for women to have abortions, or other now often considered fundamental rights; and

No, with my position there never would have been a need to challenge such things as there was never any justification for them in the first place.

That is unintelligible nonsense. As one specific rebuttal, contingency fees give good lawyers economic incentive to engage in representation for claims by people who otherwise could not afford access to justice.

No, it's a simple statement of the facts as they are. Explain, if you would, how I can get a good lawyer on contingency when I'm charged with a crime? There's no payoff to cover the fees. I get a public defender which means basically pot luck. There are very good lawyers in the public defender's office and very poor ones. I had the misfortune to need a public defender long ago when I got the shit beat out of me by some cops who then charged me with assault (when my foot hit one of their shins when they were running up to beat me on the head with their maglite when I was already cuffed and maced) destruction of property (when said flashlight no longer worked after impacting my cranium) and resisting arrest (when I was on the ground covering my head yelling "I'm not resisting arrest"). I had 2 witnesses who testified and all of those specifics were brought up in court and not refuted. I still lost because my lawyer had more fun making assinine arguments which while logically valid were ridiculous and pissed off the jury. I saw the moment at which I lost in the juror's faces when my lawyer was going off on his third such tangent. Had I been able to afford a decent lawyer at the time it would have been an open and shut case and then I might have been able to get a lawyer on contingency to sue the city, but without being able to afford a competent lawyer for the criminal trial that avenue was cut off.

Hell, OJ got away with murder solely due to his ability to afford a row of sleazy lawyers.

Without lawyers, you wouldn't have to consider what it would be like to live in this world- we still would.

However, once again yo

Re:Guess what?

[hey!]

Well, you're missing a point. A lawyer acts as a proxy for his clients. It's unfortunate, but every other alternative would be worse.

Take criminal law. People hate the idea that lawyers represent guilty criminals. However if they didn't then you'd have conviction without a trial, at the hands of your lawyer. Civil law is, of course different, but not entirely. It is not the job of the lawyer to be the final arbiter of his client's case. He is supposed to present his client's argument as the client would himself, if he had the expertise, subject to the ethical rules of the profession.

That's not to say that there aren't abuses, like using the economic threat of litigation to win extra-legal benefits for clients. That should be grounds for disbarment, but it's hard to enforce, and the lines can be fuzzy in places.

The reason there are too many unethical lawyers is probably that there are too many lawyers altogether trying to make a living at the profession; more than can be supported ethically. On the other hand, there probably aren't enough really good lawyers. Somebody with the legal acumen and rhetorical abilities of an Alan Dershowitz or Johnnie Cochran is not going to starve in any kind of legal system. If you're just mediocre, then bending ethical standards is one way to make a living.

Re:Guess what?

[jahudabudy]

Your assuming that people will "litigate" regardless of the method or inconvenience involved.

Yep. B/c historically, they have. Turns out, when two or more people have a disagreement, they tend to settle it one way or another. Providing a legal, non-violent, ideally impartial way to settle such disagreements benefits society. Even with the court system, how often do people get out from behind their desks in their comfy chairs and go wreck some shit b/c they're pissed off? You think doing away with lawyers, which essentially means doing away with the court system, would decrease the messiness and unfairness in dispute settlements?

Re:Guess what?

[phantomfive]

yeah, as they say, 90% of the lawyers give the other 10% a bad name. A shout out to NewYorkCountyLawyer

Re:Guess what?

[Wicked Zen]

So... lawyers are similar to guns?

Interesting.

Re:Guess what?

[jmichaelg]

Greed and chutzpah causes litigation as well. To wit:

When the dust settled, Schaeffer had traded 13% of Cogent for $132 million in net cash and all of Allied Riser's fiber network. As a kicker, the pugnacious Schaeffer sued Allied Riser's board for having agreed to merge with Cogent. The suit cited the duty of loyalty owed to the bondholders. Allied Riser's insurers settled, paying Cogent $5 million from its directors' and officers' insurance policy.

Re:Guess what?

[stonecypher]

Lawyers don't cause litigation.

Good lawyers don't cause litigation. Just because you aren't Jack Thompson doesn't mean other laywers aren't. Many lawyers litigate on behalf of clients that have never even heard of them in some states, though as a lawyer, I'm sure you already know that.

Don't confuse that you're a reasonable person with that other people are too.

Re:Guess what?

[HiThere]

Historically tort reform has been wealthy people with lots of power shifting the basis on which suits can be filed or won.

Now I'll grant that this isn't what it's sold as, but historically that's been what's happened. Strangely enough they've never shifted the basis in such a manner as to disadvantage themselves.

Re:Guess what?

[Luyseyal]

On the whole, reasonable, intelligent parties = no ligitation = no lawyers.

Corollary: Since there are so few reasonable, intelligent parties, we have a clogged court system.

... Which is exactly why I always tell Libertarians that if their fantasy world came true, we'd all have to retain personal lawyers to haggle out every detail in life just to get by.

$0.02USD,
-l

Re:Guess what?

[HiThere]

That's what they say as a joke. Actually, however, it's only around 5% or fewer that give lawyers a bad name. But over 90% deserve the bad name that they get, because they act to protect those 5% from punishment.

And this *isn't* a joke.

(OTOH, the whole context is based on the presumption that the legal system is capable of being salvaged. That a system where gaming the system to defend clients that you know are guilty is salvageable. I'm not convinced that this is true. My suspicion is that the legal system was tolerable in the 17-1800's was because it was weakly enforced, and was clearly better than anarchy. It's clearly not really interested in truth or justice, and makes no real effort to determine those. In fact there are many places in the rules for acceptable evidence, what information can be made available to the jury, etc. where it is quite clear that gaming the system is valued more highly than either truth or justice.)

Re:Guess what?

[phantomfive]

No, you are right, the legal system does have problems, and it has from the beginning, you should see what John Adams had to say about lawyers in his day. Basically they were as corrupt and lawsuit happy as today. Law has a long and rich tradition.

What system would be best? There is none, thing about what the courts are trying to accomplish (in criminal law): they are trying to establish what happened at a particular point in time in the past, and so often that is impossible. Eye witnesses are notoriously unreliable, DNA evidence doesn't always mean what you hope, and often there is just no evidence either way. Can you PROVE you were watching TV last night (or whatever you were doing)? In the vast majority of criminal cases, it is not clear at all that the correct person is being prosecuted. As one person said, "Justice doesn't mean the guilty get punished, it just means someone gets punished."

There is often no real way to prove guilt, that is why it is so important that the purpose of jail is not to punish, but to rehabilitate. Then someone who is punished falsely will leave quickly, and those who need help will get it. This is of course hard, but much more possible than trying to figure out what happened.

Make incarceration for rehabilitation, not revenge.

Re:Guess what?

[walkerp1]

HTH am I supposed to get my Lawyer bash on in the face of your insufferably reasonable arguments? You, sir, are an insensitive clod.

Re:Guess what?

[Anonymous Coward]

"...by people who otherwise could not afford access to justice."

If one must "afford" access to something, that thing -what ever it may be- is not, I think, "justice"

justice
n.
      1. The quality of being just; fairness

Justice. Dictionary.com. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/justice (accessed: October 31, 2008).

Re:Guess what?

[ChrisMaple]

Lawyers seem to have a very limited and warped sense of what is ethical. Two minutes on the phone is rounded up to an hour and billed $275. Finding a lawyer who doesn't consider his customer an infinite money source is extraordinarily difficult.

This may be just the beginning of this stuff...

[mlts]

As of now, there are no laws that an ISP has to deliver packets to any site, or any port.

IMHO, this is just the start of this type of activity. Eventually (assuming no regulation is done), ISPs will just refuse traffic from any domain who doesn't pay them a certain amount per bit per month. So, if Yahoo doesn't pay ISP "A" a fee so their bits will go across, all that ISP's subscribers would see either the destination unreachable, or even worse, be redirected to another site.

As of now, there are no laws against ISPs doing this. One could in the future attempt to go to their bank, be redirected to another bank because the other bank pays the ISP to carry their traffic and refuse the other bank access.

Re:This may be just the beginning of this stuff...

[Anonymous Coward]

One could in the future attempt to go to their bank, be redirected to another bank because the other bank pays the ISP to carry their traffic and refuse the other bank access.

This sort of thing is given as the reason that a Chicago mortician (Strowger) invented auto-telephony. He suspected that the telephone operators were sending his customer's calls to his opposition. Can we hope for a similar outcome?

Re:This may be just the beginning of this stuff...

[hey!]

There is contract law. There are consumer protection laws.

Sprint may have a legitimate beef with Cogeent, but it's actions affect customers and partners that are not a party to that dispute.

Re:This may be just the beginning of this stuff...

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't need regulation if we can get some real competition going. And that means the government seizing control of the last mile and letting anyone rent it, and removing the government sponsored monopolies.

English, please

[oldhack]

COL is not a word. What you meant is SOL. Anyways...

Re:English, please

[oldhack]

The moron says what?

Re:English, please

[c_g_hills]

ESL has been replaced by ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages), since English is often a third, fourth of fifth language to some people.

Re:English, please

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently, a stupid question like "The moron says what?"

disruptive pricing

[Anonymous Coward]

All of Cogent's previous de-peering problems were ultimately due to their ultra low prices and their ability to steal customers. I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case again. Everyone has a lot of money to lose with Cogent's $6/Mbps pricing today. It undercuts everyone else. Cogent is basically wiping them clean (and not making much money in the process.) Ultimately they are banking on MUCH larger uses in the future. But their business model is not exactly profitable.

Re:disruptive pricing

[Lennie]

Everyone ?:

Get BGP+IPv6+IPv4 for $5/Mbps!

http://www.he.net/

Re:disruptive pricing

[Anonymous Coward]

You call it disruptive pricing. I call it free market.

Re:disruptive pricing

[wohlford]

I just checked their site. Current rates a $4/megabit.

Re:disruptive pricing

[DigitalSorceress]

Reminds me of the interwebz back in the late '90s... essentially selling dollar bills for 80 cents each but being convinced they'd make it up on volume. :)

Something about Cogent's pricing always kind of ticked my "too good to be true" filter.

Re:disruptive pricing

[Deadplant]

Actually Cogent's best price is $4/Mbps for 10Gb/s links.
Cogent's business model is much simpler than the other big ISPs. Unmetered IP transit. That's it.
No complex metering and billing and 10,000 products and services.
You can buy 10/100/1000/10000/40000 Mb/s ip transit blocks. that's it.

They are also not making any money.
That's the real problem.
The other big ISPs are used to fat profit margins while Cogent is apparently happy to break even (at best).
There is also a timing factor... while some other tier-1s were still grinning about their shiny new 10Gb/s backbones Cogent was lighting theirs at 40Gb/s across the board. Being a late-comer made their network cheaper to build. That and snapping up dark fiber on the cheap from bankrupt companies.

All in all, Cogent is fucking fantastic for the consumer.

Re:disruptive pricing

[R2.0]

"Ultimately they are banking on MUCH larger uses in the future. But their business model is not exactly profitable."

Let's see...

1) Undercut competitors
2) Pick up competitors business after they go tits up
3) Jack up prices after gainng dominant market share.
4) PROFIT!

Standard Oil SOP.

A table is worth a thousand pictures...

[slushdork]

Internet Health Report

Re:A table is worth a thousand pictures...

[TheReaperD]

I must admit, this is one of the most useful links I have ever seen posted.

This one goes into my permanent bookmarks. Thank you.

Re:A table is worth a thousand pictures...

[mapkinase]

If I am using Comcast where do I look for similar results for Comcast?

Re:A table is worth a thousand pictures...

[compro01]

IIRC, Comcast gets their backbone connections from Level3.

Re:A table is worth a thousand pictures...

[mapkinase]

If you referring to this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tier_3_ISP

A Tier 2 Network is an Internet service provider who engages in the practice of peering with other networks, but who still purchases IP transit to reach some portion of the Internet.

I just wanted to know which of the Level 1 providers affect Comcast.

Re:A table is worth a thousand pictures...

[mapkinase]

Thanks. I have got it now.

Re:A table is worth a thousand pictures...

[compro01]

Level3 is the name of a Tier 1 provider. And I really think they should come up with a less confusing name.

Also, I think Comcast may use AT&T backbone in some areas, though I can't seem to find a decently up-to-date map of who owns what areas of backbone in the US.

Re:A table is worth a thousand pictures...

[mapkinase]

And I thought that Comcast owns cables in my area...

How do I find who owns cable in my area?

Re:A table is worth a thousand pictures...

[compro01]

No idea. That's why I was wanting to find a map, but I can't anything useful for the US. Some lovely maps of Europe's backbone network, and a decent map of Telus' lines across Canada, but I can't find a decent map of the US infrastructure.

Comcast may own the cables, but AFAIK, they don't own any backbone infrastructure.

Re:A table is worth a thousand pictures...

[mapkinase]

I thought cables ARE backbone infrastructure. Do you mean they own the cables, but the switchers and and other hardware between the cables are not owned by them?

Re:A table is worth a thousand pictures...

[compro01]

Depends what you mean by "cables". the coax cable systems and such run by Comcast are not backbone. Backbone are high bandwidth (multi-gigabit) fibre optic lines, mostly running between major cities and associated hardware in the cities, and AFAIK, Comcast does not own any of the latter. They purchase transit capacity on them from other companies, such as Level3 and AT&T's backbone division.

Re:A table is worth a thousand pictures...

[mapkinase]

Thanks for patiently explaining all this to a n00b.

Call me a troll if you want

[iminplaya]

But I think this is a good thing. Maybe now it might motivate people to demand that they
FIX IT!...Just FIX IT!... find the problem, and FIX IT!

Cogent is the one behind the story in link

[George_Ou]

Cogent is the one behind the story in link and it's obviously one-sided. Most of the time, ISPs get de-peered because they deserve it. However, the smaller ISP almost always gets away with it because they play the part of the victim who got severed and they usually win on the PR front. Pressure mounts and the larger ISP eventually settles and re-establishes the connection despite getting the raw end of the deal.

What generally happens is that these tier 1 ISPs start off with equal amount of traffic that is being routed on behalf of the other ISP so they're both giving each other equal value. But that balance shifts over the years and you might have one ISP giving back 1/8th of what they're taking but the larger ISP is afraid of bad PR if they sever the connection. What might be needed is some sort of arbitrator who will look in to the facts without blaming one side or the other and just examine the facts and issue a recommendation. During that period of arbitration, the peering should continue so that customers aren't affected. If one ISP is found to be unworthy of a settlement peering arrangement because they're not holding up their end of the bargain, then they should be ordered to pay. If they refuse to pay, they deserve the blame for not paying for their Internet backbone.

Plenty of ISPs pay for their peering arrangements if they're not able to build some backbones of equal value. There's no reason some ISPs should get a settlement free peering if they're not willing to upgrade the Internet's backbone infrastructure.

Re:Cogent is the one behind the story in link

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine a small ISP starts of peering when there is an equal amount of traffing inbound and outbound: 1/1
Over time, the other ISP adds more and more servers, buys some other smaller ISP's, etc...., the ratio is now 4/1 or so.

Why should the "smaller" ISP be punnished for the ratio, when they still offer the exact same amount of traffic?

Re:Cogent is the one behind the story in link

[Anonymous Coward]

What is really needed is a (number of) neutral peering points. It doesn't really matter if your customers are running so many servers that your bandwidth to the peering point is insufficient, or if your customers are surfing so much on sites on the other side of the peering point, you just buy more bandwidth. Obviously this doesn't work if you want to route traffic through someone else's network, only if you want to reach/want to be reachable by someone on a neighbouring network. It's the way things usually work in Europe, and I can't remember any cases of ISPs disconnecting from any of the peering points, because that would certainly make their customers really angry.

Re:Cogent is the one behind the story in link

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, however, the "secret peering agreements" would turn in to a "cartel" if anything changes.

You work as a security analyst?

[iminplaya]

That sounds like a dangerous job these days

 

Lawyers and clients

[Raul654]

Re - "It is the wish of my client." -- I'm reminded of what Richard Nixon's lawyer famously said while arguing before the US Supreme Court in US v. Nixon: "The President wants me to argue that he is as powerful a monarch as Louis XIV, only four years at a time, and is not subject to the processes of any court in the land except the court of impeachment." He knew it was a nutty position to take, so he explicitly stated that it was his client's position, not his.

Re:Lawyers and clients

[Darby]

He knew it was a nutty position to take, so he explicitly stated that it was his client's position, not his.

However were he possessed of even the slightest hint of ethics he would have quit on the spot, called a press conference, told the public that the president was a traitor who intended to be a monarch, and that we needed to pull a Louis XVI to save the Republic.
But the fame and potential wealth he could get by defending a traitor outweighed any integrity that scumbag might once have had.
  Ford's folly killed any hope of that leading to Reagan the terrorist supporting crack dealer and the Bush crime syndicate. Ever increasing crimes against the nation and never any punishment. It must be good to be the king.

That, in a nutshell, is the problem with our country.

Re:Lawyers and clients

[ozphx]

Wrong. A lawyer is like a doctor. Its someone you can go to for 100% trust and confidentiality, because you NEED their advice on sensitive matters.

I know my doctor isn't going to call my wife up with a line like "Well I can't in clear concience keep treating the clap that this cheating fucker picked up from those hookers, and I think you should divorce him."

I know my lawyer is going to represent me to the best of his ability and keep his goddamn opinions to himself unless I ask for them.

Re:Lawyers and clients

[ultranova]

However were he possessed of even the slightest hint of ethics he would have quit on the spot, called a press conference, told the public that the president was a traitor who intended to be a monarch, and that we needed to pull a Louis XVI to save the Republic.

Therefore betraying both his client and his professional duty. It wouldn't have been a very ethical thing to do at all, and certainly wouldn't have given him any grounds to call anyone else a traitor.

But the fame and potential wealth he could get by defending a traitor outweighed any integrity that scumbag might once have had.

The legal system is built on the premises that no one is guilty until proven so in a court of law, and that even traitors deserve to have defence counsel, especially when they haven't yet been proven to be traitors by said court. What you are suggesting is a lynch mob killing people they have deemed enemies of state without giving them a chance to defend themselves.

The lawyer did his duty, which was also the right thing to do. Hate Nixon and his deeds as much as you want, but that is no excuse to suppress his right to a fair trial. The second you do so, for any reason, your precious Republic is already gone and replaced with rule by arbitrary whims of whoever happens to be the most powerful at the moment; no different than Louis's France, really.

Any non-dictatorial form of government requires rule of law, because the only alternative is rule by someone's whims. Rule of law requires fair trials even to the worst scumbags, because otherwise it can be circumvented by declaring someone a scumbag. Fair trial requires that your defense attorney and everyone else acting on your behalf keep on doing that work to the best of their ability, no matter how many vomit bags they might need to use in the process, because otherwise declaring you scumbag tilts the odds against you, thus circumventing the rule of law.

Re:Lawyers and clients

[bloobloo]

Any non-dictatorial form of government requires rule of law, because the only alternative is rule by someone's whims. Rule of law requires fair trials even to the worst scumbags, because otherwise it can be circumvented by declaring someone a scumbag. Fair trial requires that your defense attorney and everyone else acting on your behalf keep on doing that work to the best of their ability, no matter how many vomit bags they might need to use in the process, because otherwise declaring you scumbag tilts the odds against you, thus circumventing the rule of law.

Substitute "scumbag" with "witch", "communist", "paedophile", "terrorist" or whatever the latest bogeyman is. Very accurate.

Re:Lawyers and clients

[BobMcD]

I know my lawyer is going to represent me to the best of his ability and keep his goddamn opinions to himself unless I ask for them.

Which brings us back to the original point: You 'know' this because there's no reasonable expectation of ethics in lawyers.

Re:Lawyers and clients

[db32]

Hey now. I think "Republican" and "Democrat" does deserve to be treated worse than any of those you mentioned. They are the most legitimate and pressing threat to our society!

Re:Lawyers and clients

[wvmarle]

Calling someone "terrorist" is used as such already. At least in the USA (Guantanamo Bay), and in the UK (where it seems that calling someone "terrorist" allows the police to hold the suspect extra long without even having to file charges, something like that, details I have to look up).

Even terrorists deserve a fair trial. And deserve to be treated just like any other suspect of a crime. If not, well, "the terrorists already won" isn't it?

Re:Lawyers and clients

[ianare]

So not spreading confidential info that could very well destroy a person's reputation, career, and marriage is not ethical ?
Keep in mind lawyers' loyalty is only to their clients, exactly like doctors and their patients.
Think about it, would you go to a criminal defense lawyer if he was just going to rat you out to the fucking pigs ?

Re:Lawyers and clients

[MikeBabcock]

The legal system is built on the premises that no one is guilty until proven so in a court of law, and that even traitors deserve to have defence counsel, especially when they haven't yet been proven to be traitors by said court.

Agreed. Due process is essential here, and I think a lot of people get mad at lawyers instead of judges, where some of this blame belongs. A good judge (the SCO case comes to mind) will look a lawyer in the eyes and ask them "does that sound as stupid to you as it does to me?" or something legally equivalent.

Lawyers' jobs are to make a case, the judge's job is to interpret and apply the law. Judges make the decision to actually give credence to what a lawyer says or not.

Re:Lawyers and clients

[BobMcD]

And again, 'ratting you out to the fucking pigs' is covered by the law as being inadmissible in court. If there were no such prohibition, yes, you very much could expect that to happen, hence the law.

No expectation of it, no law.

Lawyers bend and twist the law to get their desired outcome. If everyone interpreted the law against the spirit in which it was written there would be no such things as a 'legal technicality'. I understand the merits and design of the current system very well. I, unlike some of the others posting in this thread, also understand that the system has installed its own ethical guidelines exactly, precisely, because LAWYERS ARE NOT EXPECTED TO BRING THEIR OWN.

I don't know how to make it any more clear than that.

Re:Lawyers and clients

[ozphx]

And again, there are laws covering doctor-patient confidentiality, ditto with legal counsel. "Ratting your out" is covered by law, as this is not how we want our legal system to work.

Our lawyers are expected to NOT pass personal judgement and represent us to the best of our ability, and we as a society have created laws to ensure that any "IANAL" shouting layman can be properly represented. This brings me back to the OP, who claimed that someones laywer should have "quit on the spot" and claimed his client was a "traitor". Idiotic.

Lawyers are loyal to their clients alone, and this is how it should be. I have an expectation that I can get the best possible unbiased advice and representation in the legal system, and this allows a much better percieved fairness. Or would you prefer it common practice for the RIAA to be bribing your defense lawyer in order to make sure he throws your trial?

If you have ever been involved in litigation (beyond the sensationalist crap you read in the media) you will find that "legal technicalities" are few and far between - and in general there is a fair bit of fucking common sense in the legal system.

Re:Lawyers and clients

[geekoid]

"Therefore betraying both his client and his professional duty."

So? It is more ethical then trying to protect someone you KNOW is guilty.

And just ebcasue one person is a trator, doesn't mean he can't point out other traitors.

Of course one traitor walked is walking away from a professions, then other put the whole constitution at risk.

"The legal system is built on the premises that no one is guilty until proven so in a court of law, and that even traitors deserve to have defence counsel, especially when they haven't yet been proven to be traitors by said court."
non sequitor.

That in no way mean people have to be forced against their will to be someones lawyer.

"lynch mob killing people "

He suggested no such thing. The president could have defended himself. No one is saying he should go to court.

"Fair trial requires that your defense attorney and everyone else acting on your behalf keep on doing that work to the best of their ability,..."

No it doesn't it.
Fair trails requires a Judge and a jury of your peers. It doesn't mean people are forced to ignore facts, and try to out manuever other lawyers.

If a man that comited a crime goes free, then by definition the trial wasn't fair. and visa versa.

Re:Lawyers and clients

[BobMcD]

You're being hyperbolic, but ideally, and since you asked, I would prefer that attorneys bear in mind the 'greater good' at all times, wherever possible.

Same could be said of all professions, really.

Re:Lawyers and clients

[Retric]

only to their clients, exactly like doctors and their patients.

You might think this, but see what happens once the CDC is called because you contracted an interesting new ailment. In medicine there is an idea that once several people are at risk your patent should be treated with all the dignity and respect possible inside of quarantine.

Re:Lawyers and clients

[Darby]

This brings me back to the OP, who claimed that someones laywer should have "quit on the spot" and claimed his client was a "traitor". Idiotic.

No, I did not say that he should have "claimed" that his client was a traitor. It's a fact that Nixon was a traitor and he was asking the lawyer to aid and abet him in his treasonous activities. My assertion is that the lawyer should damn well have quit on the spot and thrown that piece of shit to the wolves. Sure he would have been disbarred, but that was his only ethical option at that point. Sure he had a responsibility to his client, but that was clearly trumped by his responsibility to the several hundred million citizens of this country who he decided to betray instead.
His complete lack of integrity and ethics is why he did that.

Lawyers are loyal to their clients alone, and this is how it should be. I have an expectation that I can get the best possible unbiased advice and representation in the legal system, and this allows a much better percieved fairness.

So If I talk to my lawyer about how cute your pre teen daughter is and how much I'd like to rape her and go over my plans to do so with him then he should just keep his mouth shut and let it happen and even offer me advice on how to get away with it? The situation we're talking about is far far worse than that, so if you're not ok with that, then you don't actually believe your own arguments.

Re:Lawyers and clients

[Darby]

Therefore betraying both his client and his professional duty. It wouldn't have been a very ethical thing to do at all, and certainly wouldn't have given him any grounds to call anyone else a traitor.

It would have been betraying his client and his professional duty, but it would have been *not* betraying his country and the hundreds of millions of citizens. It would have been his only ethical choice. Aiding and abetting treason is far worse than violating a professional code of ethics in order to stop acts of treason by the president. It's the only path that would have left him with the integrity to call someone a traitor. Otherwise, he's an accessory to treason.

Any non-dictatorial form of government requires rule of law, because the only alternative is rule by someone's whims. Rule of law requires fair trials even to the worst scumbags, because otherwise it can be circumvented by declaring someone a scumbag

However, the problem is that we do not have the rule of law in this country and the pardon of Nixon is what caused it to reach this level. Our rulers are officially above the law. That's what Ford said loud and clear when he pardoned that traitor. Since then we've had Reagan selling crack to buy guns for terrorists and Bush setting up death camps, spying on everyone and even getting Congress to retroactively pardon him for treason.

I'm sorry, but I will take one lawyer showing ethics and getting disbarred for it over watching the elimination of the rule of law and the deterioration of this once great nation into a fascist police state.

Fair trial requires that your defense attorney and everyone else acting on your behalf keep on doing that work to the best of their ability, no matter how many vomit bags they might need to use in the process, because otherwise declaring you scumbag tilts the odds against you, thus circumventing the rule of law.

Except, again, you completely miss the point that this lawyer was arguing to eliminate the rule of law, but only as applied to those in power. That is far far more dangerous than one lawyer showing enough integrity to sacrifice his career to protect the rule of law.

 

Re:Lawyers and clients

[jonaskoelker]

However were he possessed of even the slightest hint of ethics he would have quit on the spot

Even the slimiest of scumbags deserve their fair day in court with legal representation. There is no such thing as fairness for some. It's unethical to deny them that, so it must be ethical for everyone competent to defend them properly. Otherwise, we have ethics for some, and that doesn't work out very well either.

Is in unethical to do something that is ethically justifiable in itself if it also benefits you?

That being said, when all the evidence is put on the table, most accused of being slimy scumbags are shown to be just that. And they should be treated fairly for that, meaning harshly.

Re:Lawyers and clients

[HiThere]

You have made a good argument that our legal system is inherently corrupt.

I do not believe that there is ANY ethical action that is possible once a lawyer decides that his client is guilty of a heinous crime beyond the possibility of his doubting it. The only quasi-ethical stance is that I can see is that he should resign his position, but remain silent. And I'm not comfortable with that. And clearly lawyers don't frequently act in this quasi-ethical fashion.

Why do you presume that a person who is guilty beyond any reasonable doubt is deserving any defense? The only reason that I can see is that you believe that the particular law he is guilty of breaking is, itself, so unethical that breaking it is the lesser ethical violation. I'll grant that there are many such laws, but that doesn't seem to be what we are discussing.

Now if you are talking about following customary practices that have by tradition in the legal profession become called ethical, then you have a sort of a point. But accepting it requires accepting those traditions, which are commonly rejected by those who aren't themselves lawyers. And rejected on the grounds that they are unethical, despite the fact that lawyers label them as ethics.

Note that even many lawyers who are in and of themselves ethical accept these principles. They just operate in areas of the field where they don't apply. But by accepting and defending these principles as ethical they are themselves acting unethically...though probably not consciously so.

To my mind the purpose of a justice system is to determine truth and to render ethical judgments based on that truth. When gaming the system becomes the end, then justice is gone. And contesting to shield a person known to you to be guilty is gaming the system, unless you consider that the law under which he is guilty is itself unethical.

Re:Lawyers and clients

[fscking_coward_2001]

> If everyone interpreted the law against the spirit in which it was written there would be no such things as a 'legal technicality'

And how do we all know the "spirit"? ESP? Tarot cards? Crystal ball?

Re:Lawyers and clients

[ozphx]

It's a fact that Nixon was a traitor and he was asking the lawyer to aid and abet him in his treasonous activities.

No it was not a fact when he was talking to his lawyer. Things like this are only a fact AFTER they have been determined in a court of law. Would you like to be (falsely, but convincingly) accused of molesting children and have no lawyer defend you, removing all hope of clearing your name?

The most ethical option is to stick by his client. Everyone deserves this representation. If it was certain that Nixon was a traitor, etc, etc, and the lawyer knew that, then he would also know he would certainly be defeated. He can put in a good defense, knowing that if the judge does his damn job, his client will still go to jail, society will be saved, and his client won't get too badly buttraped by "the wolves".

So If I talk to my lawyer about how cute your pre teen daughter is and how much I'd like to rape her and go over my plans to do so with him then he should just keep his mouth shut and let it happen and even offer me advice on how to get away with it?

Yes. He should. Chances are by talking this thru with someone who is telling him that "if you get caught then I won't be able to keep you out of jail", he might change his mind and go have consensual sex with your mother for the low low price of $2.

Re:Lawyers and clients

[BobMcD]

A rare little thing called 'common sense' usually does just fine...

What they are doing is probably illegal.

[Jane Q. Public]

Until the lawsuit is settled, that is.

At that point, it is up to the courts. But people paying for general access today, deserve general access.

Obligatory Ironic Rhetoric.

[plasmacutter]

Clearly, this is an example of the free market prevailing in the provision of an efficient, secure, neutral, functional, and complete internet to the populace!

If only those other regulations were not getting in the way, compelling sprint to cut cogent off.

NANOG Discussion

[simpleguy]

More discussion on NANOG Mailing List

10/30/08 Sprint / Cogent

http://www.merit.edu/mail.archives/nanog/threads.html

Tip: The probability of finding more accurate info on NANOG than here seems to be higher.

Re:NANOG Discussion

[LaminatorX]

Or at least there was until you linked there on /.

Re:NANOG Discussion

[gfolkert]

If NANOG List on Merit cannot handle it... that would be a serious problem.

I don't quite think you understand what NANOG is or what Merit is.

Re:NANOG Discussion

[evilviper]

The probability of finding more accurate info on NANOG than here seems to be higher.

Unfortunately, that "probability" hasn't panned out...

Allow me to summarize the relevant threads on NANOG:

-Verizon de-peered Cogent
--Yup, sure did
--Same in Europe
--Pings fail
--Why?
---Because Cogent is inexpensive
---They're a feuding.
--They shouldn't do that

THE END

Re:NANOG Discussion

[LaminatorX]

Oh, I'm quite aware, thank you.

I wasn't suggesting it was about to be slashdotted. Rather, I was imagining that the signal to noise ratio would be soon dragged down by random slashdotters joining in on the threads there.

While you still have connectivity

[really?]

OK everyone, while you still have connectivity login to your boxes and do your OS's/distribution's equivalent of "apt-get install UUCP"

Re:While you still have connectivity

[Koiu Lpoi]

Why?

Re:While you still have connectivity

[GenP]

To hasten the glorious return of the bangpath!

Re:While you still have connectivity

[compro01]

Because Sprint isn't merely unplugging things. they're actively blackholing (redirecting all traffic to nowhere) Cogent, which sabotages automatic route-around-damage systems, as it makes it seem like the data is being passed successfully.

UUCP allows you to pretty much manually route around by explicitly defining the path (a bangpath). Thanks to the wonderful redundancy of the internet, there is pretty much always a usable path between any 2 points, though said path may be ridiculously non-optimal, like going from Chicago to New York via Paris, Berlin, and Moscow, and thus likely won't get routed through automatically.

Re:While you still have connectivity

[dpilot]

Actually, this is the most damaging aspect of the whole thing. It's certainly easy to believe Cogent is simply getting slapped again and they deserve, except for this. In the network age, blackholing is almost a death penalty, except that it's reversible.

Any net neutraility legislation ought to include explicit provisions for blackholing - when it's allowed, how it's remediated, due process, etc.

That is also a breach of contract

[Sycraft-fu]

You'll discover with big lines that the providers have a good level of things they have to do for you. The bigger the line, the more they are bound by. IF they pull shit like that, well it's something that can get them hit with a large suit in court. They don't get to just cut things off if they are annoyed with you.

MOD PARENT UP Re:Cogent is the one behind

[OddlyMoving]

Not only is Cogent a provider of poor quality bandwidth, the parent cites the true reason why these de-peerings happen - not playing fair and contributing to the well being of the backbone.

Re:MOD PARENT UP Re:Cogent is the one behind

[Lennie]

Where is this one backbone anyway ?

Re:MOD PARENT UP Re:Cogent is the one behind

[Deadplant]

poor quality bandwidth? that is nonsense.
Aside form being wrong, how would 'poor quality bandwidth' in cogent's network give Sprint a reason to cut them off?

Cogent pissed off Sprint by being too fast and too cheap.

...and...

[Mirar]

So what did they reply?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

online traiding...

[resignator]

I remember last time Sprint/Level3/AOL were scrapping with Cogent. I was working for a very large online trading company and our stock quotes were provided by a company using Cogent. Needless to say, AOL users who traded on our software were stuck without quotes because of this. Our trade desk was flooded with calls from some very angry people. We did our best to place orders but it was still quite a shitstorm.

The worse part was trying to explain to a laymen what exactly was happening. Now we have a backup feed with a company using Level3 as well as our main feed on Cogent. Hard lesson learned I suppose.

Yup (ATT, too)

[mkcmkc]

Exactly. I had AT&T pull this bullshit on me when they screwed up my billing after a move. If it's got your brand on it, you'd better own it...

Re:Yup (ATT, too)

[theaveng]

My company's internet has been down all day, with only half the websites working. I wonder if the Sprint/Cogent tiff has anything to do with that?

Re:Yup (ATT, too)

[mcmonkey]

My company's internet has been down all day, with only half the websites working. I wonder if the Sprint/Cogent tiff has anything to do with that?

And yet you still have bandwidth to get to slashdot.

Re:Yup (ATT, too)

[afidel]

At a previous employer we had the ultimate screwup from a telco. We moved offices and returned the equipment from the old office. We had a signed receipt for the return of the equipment, but because the person who had received it hadn't entered it into their computer they insisted that we owed them for the equipment. After months of arguing we finally gave in and paid the stupid fee. TWO years later their accounting system decided that it had applied that check to our monthly charges instead of to the fee and turned off our service without notification because it saw the automated letters that had been sent out ~30 months prior. That was the last straw for them, we switched to a fractional PRI with a CLEC and never looked back.

Re:Yup (ATT, too)

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you for sharing. That was mind-numbing.

Couldn't happen to a nicer ISP.

[Anonymous Coward]

I suppose that's what Cogent gets for hosting certain unlicensed investigators we all know and love...

Cogent is terrible

[Anonymous Coward]

In my experience, Cogent has always been crappy.

Cogent not all good

[TorKlingberg]

This spring Cogent cut the peering with European network provider Telia. Not just the peering either, Cogent also blocked all packets coming from IPs withing Telia's network, even when passing through other networks. That means Cogent was degrading the peering with all other networks.

Re:Cogent not all good

[Daver297]

Cogent is a good Network, however it appears the Sprint/Cogent thing has been going on for sometime.. I recall this same issue atleast as far back as 2003 when I worked for one of the two mentioned companies

Let's build one phrase by phrase ... I'll start:

[DikSeaCup]

If you start putting your car through the tubes ...

why dont we go back to pistols at dawn?

[Anonymous Coward]

then all these 'i hate lawyers' people could see how much they 'i hate guns'

Traceroute

[Anonymous Coward]

If a traceroute is successful, then an ICMP tunnel could be used.

Why lawyers are despised

[Anonymous Coward]

They make the powerful more powerful.

The better the lawyer, the better your chances of avoiding penalty (whether deserved or not). But the better the lawyer, the more expensive the lawyer.

So only those with lots of money can afford the best lawyers.

Those with lots of money already have lots of power merely by fact of being wealthy.

By being poor, you have little power and must take whatever lawyer you can afford or be given (and when given an attorney, they don't work hard because they aren't being paid). And you have little power outside that too.

So the rich and powerful who don't NEED as much protection get more powerful because of lawyers.

And the lawyers love it.

So we despise them.

We shoot dogs that worry sheep even though it is their nature and they are not dangerous (except to sheep). Why do attack lawyers get away with it?

Wouldn't that be trademark infringement?

[tepples]

So, if Yahoo doesn't pay ISP "A" a fee so their bits will go across, all that ISP's subscribers would see either the destination unreachable, or even worse, be redirected to another site.

As of now, there are no laws against ISPs doing this.

You mean other than trademark law? If I type "yahoo.com" into my browser and the ISP sends me to msn.com, the ISP is passing off MSN as Yahoo!.

Re:Wouldn't that be trademark infringement?

[mlts]

Actually no. The ISP isn't saying the second party is the first, just refusing connections to the first party and redirecting to another site.

OBCar analogy: Say, all the roads are privately owned. This is as if owner of the roads decided to barricate the exit off a highway to someone because their competitor paid the road owner to do so, as well as build an exit ramp to the guy who paid the extra cash.

Rockband Central Server Server use COGENT?

[zepo1a]

Have not been able to connect since late yesterday afternoon. Still wasn't connecting this morning when I tried before leaving for work...PS3 BTW

EMBARQ/Sprint is my DSL Provider...wonder if this shutoff has anything to do with my Rockband connection problems.

Anyone have an IP for the Rockband servers I could do a traceroute on?

I'm on Sprint EVDO and can't get to archive.org

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it just me or is archive.org down for other ISP's too?

Thanks

Looking glasses

[mbone]

If you are having trouble with internet connectivity and suspect this is the issue you can :

Use traceroute if you can or

Go to the various looking glasses to see if you can get to your site (or the other site) from Sprint, Cogent, or an intermediate point.

The Cogent Looking glass

The Sprint looking glass.

The Traceroute.org list.

Can't get from Sprint EVDO to archive.org

[Anonymous Coward]

What a total rip-off Sprint is.

$ sudo tcptraceroute archive.org
Selected device ppp0, address 68.246.243.209, port 35914 for outgoing packets
Tracing the path to archive.org (207.241.229.39) on TCP port 80 (www), 30 hops max
  1 68.28.121.69 44.408 ms 62.744 ms 67.784 ms
  2 68.28.121.91 71.799 ms 63.719 ms 67.952 ms
  3 68.28.123.55 67.748 ms 72.797 ms 62.868 ms
  4 * * *
  5 68.28.127.5 48.881 ms 71.804 ms 63.785 ms
  6 * * *
  7 68.28.125.69 71.849 ms 63.795 ms 71.766 ms
  8 * * *
30 * * *
Destination not reached

Re:Can't get from Sprint EVDO to archive.org

[nutznboltz]

From Cogent it works:

2 38.105.[censored].[censored] 0.891 ms 0.572 ms 0.362 ms
3 fa0-2.na01.b001805-0.dca01.atlas.cogentco.com (38.104.28.157) 0.914 ms 1.010 ms 0.797 ms
4 * * *
5 te3-2.mpd01.iah01.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.5.202) 27.581 ms 27.475 ms 27.556 ms
6 te9-2.mpd01.lax01.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.0.229) 63.308 ms 63.255 ms 63.246 ms
7 te4-1.mpd01.sjc01.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.6.30) 74.510 ms 74.551 ms 85.092 ms
8 te2-1.mpd01.sfo01.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.1.25) 75.628 ms 75.690 ms 78.929 ms
9 te3-4.ccr01.sfo05.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.24.38) 75.546 ms 75.534 ms 75.520 ms
10 internet-archive.demarc.cogentco.com (38.104.129.38) 75.878 ms 75.805 ms 75.849 ms
11 lvs.us.archive.org (207.241.229.39) [open] 76.663 ms 75.860 ms 75.990 ms

Ignorance is bliss

[Cytlid]

Great, fantastic! For a moment there, I thought maybe Sprint and Cogent were trying to "spread the packets around" ...

Really?

[jotaeleemeese]

So the ethical duty of a lawyer is to help his client to say lies?

Whoa. No wonder nobody likes them.

Re:Really?

[jeremyp]

Can you point out where the poster to whom you responded said that it was the ethical duty of the lawyer to tell lies on behalf of the client?

In fact I would have thought it was the ethical duty of the lawyer to point out to the client that lying in a court of law is a serious criminal offence. IANAL but I would have thought the rules of the client attorny relationship do not extend to the point where they force the laweyer to break the law.

Re:Really?

[Dan Ost]

lying in a court of law is a serious criminal offence.

Thanks, I needed that laugh.

Seriously, how often does perjury get prosecuted?

Re:Really?

[UncleTogie]

Were it not for the RIAA's shenanigans, I'd be tempted to agree...

Re:Really?

[caitsith01]

You're pretty much right.

If you know your client intends to lie, you can advise them not to, tell them what the consequences are, and if they insist on doing it, refuse to act for them henceforth. Interestingly, though, you cannot tell the Court or otherwise break privilege.

You certainly cannot knowingly assist your client in lying to the Court - your duties to the Court supercede your duties to your client.

Nah.

[jotaeleemeese]

It didn't work with AOL. Companies trying to pull such stunts will be out of business faster than you can say "TCP/IP"

Cogent

[DrinkDr.Pepper]

http://www.forbes.com/technology/forbes/2008/1013/064.html

Re:Cogent

[Guysmiley777]

Please parse this sentence from that article:

Schaeffer, 52, sees that as both obsolete and silly, like an electric company trying to bill its customers more for kilowatts used gets broken down into ones and zeros, all networks serve only one purpose: moving those bits from one place to another.

Re:Cogent

[mooingyak]

I think they're trying to say that he enjoys hunting deer.

Re:Cogent

[DikSeaCup]

I think there are words missing there ... like something along the lines of:

... like an electric company trying to bill its customers more for kilowatts used to run TVs rather than lights, when network traffic, be it voice, video, or just plain data, gets broken down ...

Re:Cogent

[dannycim]

That forbes article was a very interesting read. Now I'm not sure if Cogent's Dave Schaeffer is a hero or douchebag. Maybe a bit of both.

Re:Cogent

[doomicon]

You could say a bit of both. While he is arguably fighting for a just cause, he isn't doing it out of the kindness of his heart.

Re:Cogent

[Anonymous Coward]

Translation: The internet is not a big truck. It is a series of powerlines.

Re:Cogent

[Anonymous Coward]

tubes... it's a series of TUBES!

Is This Criminal Fraud?

[mgh02114]

Sprint is stopping the connections cold (my traceroutes showed as complete, and not as timing out)

Am I understanding this correctly? Sprint is reporting the packets as delivered but they are actually dropped? If so, why isn't this criminal fraud? If FedEx took your money, told you the package was delivered, but then threw the package away, there would be severe criminal and civil penalties. Existing law about lying and forgery needs to be applied to packet headers (also applies to the forged reset packets Comcast was using to throttle P2P traffic). If I'm misunderstanding the situation, I would appreciate it if someone could explain why.

Re:Is This Criminal Fraud?

[superbus1929]

Yes, you nailed it. Sprint terminated the connection; if it was a dropped or otherwise misrouted packet, it would be showing a time-out. But my traceroute that I showed in my entry) completed; I said "go to 76.X.X.X", and they said "OK! We made it to 206.X.X.X! Mission Accomplished!"

As for whether or not that's fraud... I'm wondering the same thing.

Re:Is This Criminal Fraud?

[Anonymous Coward]

If your grandma sends you $50 for your birthday, and somebody steals the letter and gives it to somebody else and they take the 50 bucks, they're gonna get charges as well as the person who stole the letter

This appears to have been expected

[Anonymous Coward]

According to this thread:
webhosting talk
They were expecting peering issues to come up with cogent.

Can't get from Sprint EVDO to archive.org

[nutznboltz]

What a total rip-off Sprint is.

$ sudo tcptraceroute archive.org
Selected device ppp0, address 68.246.243.209, port 35914 for outgoing packets
Tracing the path to archive.org (207.241.229.39) on TCP port 80 (www), 30 hops max
1 68.28.121.69 44.408 ms 62.744 ms 67.784 ms
2 68.28.121.91 71.799 ms 63.719 ms 67.952 ms
3 68.28.123.55 67.748 ms 72.797 ms 62.868 ms
4 * * *
5 68.28.127.5 48.881 ms 71.804 ms 63.785 ms
6 * * *
7 68.28.125.69 71.849 ms 63.795 ms 71.766 ms
8 * * *
30 * * *
Destination not reached

A less Ideological definition.

[RulerOf]

I would define internet access as full connectivity to all of the IP addresses shown here that are not marked as Unallocated, Multicast, or Reserved, on all source and destination ports.

But that's just me.

Re:A less Ideological definition.

[petermgreen]

Which is impossible to achive since many of those addresses are not advertised anywhere public. Many of them probablly aren't even used anywhere.

Another definition would be anyone who buys transit from one of the widely acknolaged tier 1 ISPs and allows you to communicate with them via that route. Of course that then raises the question of cogents status (afaict they are a wannabe tier 1 who refuse to buy transit but are not respected enough to get free peering from all the tier 1 ISPs but i'm not an expert)

Re:A less Ideological definition.

[RulerOf]

Free peering from all the tier 1 isp's is the definition of tier 1 connectivity... which is a bit of a broken definition. I've got my own reservations about how broken the internet's implementation of tiers is, but that's another story :P

Still, if those IP's are online and routable from a tier 1 connection, they fit into my definition.

Peering disputes

[Anonymous Coward]

  Generally happen because of one of three things:
1. One side isn't living up to their end of the peering contract. Things like maintaining inbound/outbound ratio values, or minimum amounts of traffic.

2. One side (or both) don't want to pay for the upgrades necessary to keep the connection from being saturated. This is kind of related to the first one, since its usually spelled out in the contract who pays for what upgrades in what sites.

3. One side thinks they can get money out of the other. Peering is an expense (both capex and opex). If you can cause enough pain in the other party that they either start buying paid peering or a transit circuit, you've just changed an expense to income. This usually backfires, since the enmity caused by depeering means that the "victim" is more likely to buy targetted transit from a third party than to pay the dick that tried to squeeze them.

I'm betting its one of the first two. Call me an optimist.

Smile, damn it

[Anonymous Coward]

Lawyers spread damaging ripples far beyond their bad dinner conversation... mathematicians are not that hard to tune out even while they're in the same room.

enable, pfft

[ClioCJS]

If there were no lawyers, people would represent themselves. Whenever there's a demand, someone rises to the supply. It's better to have them regulated safely than with no regulation at all. Look to the War On Drugs for a perfect example of supply meeting demand. All drug dealing violence is a result of the lack of government regulation; alcohol doesn't have these problems. (But it did during alcohol prohibition. See Al Capone.)

Cogent is at fault

[teknopurge]

As always. They let so much garbage go through their network and don't maintain the throughput arrangements with other peers, which is why Telia kicked them off around a year ago.

I get calls each month from Cogent reps trying to offer me $6/meg uplinks. Of course they can provide bargain basement pricing when they basically steal bandwidth from their peers. Good for Sprint.

Suck

[jsiples]

So ... yea, I work at a tech support company, and we're on cogent internet. Great. Today is gunna blow.

How do we know its not just another BGP hijacking

[hAckz0r]

If the problem is at the interface between subsections of the Internet how can we be sure someone is not just playing around with (screwing up) one of these two ISPs?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BGP_hijacking

On the other hand maybe some hacker on the dark side of the Internet connection might like to BGP reroute all those lost packets around the offending ISP routers thus fixing the offending ISP's problems for them. It seems that Net Neutrality is a long way off yet if the children (CEO's) can't even play nice, never mind the Governments.

Bad excuse, Cogent could just buy transit

[Tetard]

That Sprint is doing something stupid might be so, but I don't think we have the whole picture.

Cogent customers are being fed the excuse that "it's sprint's fault". That's bull, if they really wanted to help the customers and honor their side of the deal (towards their customers) they could buy transit through someone else to talk to Sprint. Sprint isn't blocking Cogent IPs, it's only dropped peering with them.

Wish I could Mod the Parent to Ten

[monk]

Listen to what the parent is saying, folks. It's the difference between freedom and dictatorship, and apparently a principal that some portion of the population in the US and UK don't understand.

The UK is doing better lately.

The US has further to go to get back on track:

Re:Wish I could Mod the Parent to Ten

[TheRaven64]

The UK is doing better [iht.com] lately.

You know, this kind of article really depresses me. Why is it that whenever there's some common sense and decency in our government that it's found in the archaic hold-overs from feudal traditions rather than the people we elected?

Darn AOL flashbacks!

[Anonymous Coward]

Keep cool. That has already happened. The name was aol. That was then. This is now.... :)

Can you remember YOUR address from 1990?

[argent]

So I'll be {rice!neuro1!baylor,nuchat!sugar{,!bonkers},uunet!ficc}!peter again?

ARIN

[DankNinja]

    This issue needs to be handled by ARIN as Sprint's decision to stop rebroadcasting Cogent's routes seems like run afoul with ARIN's AS policies.

Amazing.

[zsouthboy]

Here at work we have Sprint T1s, and sure enough, http://www.cogentco.com/ (among other things) isn't working. [Traceroute to the IP shows that it gets to the first Sprint router and then dies.]

SSH into my home box and try there (I have Comcast), and it works fine.

We'll have to look at our SLA to find out what we can do (this is UNACCEPTABLE. Period.)

Cogent is not a real tier I

[Anonymous Coward]

They have been depeered many times before.
The bottom line is that they do not have enough unique routes to be a real tier I and therefore can not maintain a free-peer traffic balance

Re:Let's build one phrase by phrase ... I'll start

[mcgrew]

NO NO NO!

The tubes are in the radios. Oh wait, they stopped putting tubes in car radios. OK, the tubes are in the tires. Oh wait, they stopped putting tubes in tires, too. Oh hell, GET OFF MY LAWN!

Invasion!

[eepok]

Disruption in communication can mean only one thing... Invasion

Re:Let's build one phrase by phrase ... I'll start

[jonaskoelker]

If you start putting your truck through the tubes ...

FTFY, happy to help.

Contactual obligation ?

[billcopc]

What's the legality of such a move ? If I'm paying a monthly fee to an ISP for internet connectivity, I expect them to do what's needed for me to have access to the entire internet. If they decide to drop a huge chunk of the world out of spite, I call that breach of contract.

If I'm just a residential user with options, I'd switch to a competitor. If I'm a business with premium services and real money on the line, I'd sue 'til their ears bleed.

Sprint is not the morality police. If they don't like Cogent, they should route their traffic around them. Pretending they don't exist is sheer criminal malice.

Re:Oh, good. Say that when one hand is

[davidsyes]

grabbing the (or "a") teste harder or crushing more than the other is getting grabbed or crushed. Something has to give. Boy, cott off the hand the squeezed thee...

(oh, wait, is it hell-o-ween?)

Cogent Disregards Agreement with Sprint

[Sprint Spokesman]

In 2006, Sprint and Cogent entered into a commercial trial agreement. Cogent failed to satisfy Sprint's peering criteria and refused to pay Sprint to stay connected to our network. Sprint notified Cogent well in advance that it would disconnect Cogent unless it paid, and Cogent refused. As a result of Cogent's refusal, Sprint was forced to terminate the commercial interconnection agreement and disconnect its network from Cogent's. Cogent's posturing is nothing more than an effort to divert attention away from its' contractual obligations, and this is the latest in a growing list of peering-related disputes between Cogent and Internet backbone providers.

Re:Cogent Disregards Agreement with Sprint

[jaredmauch]

http://www.renesys.com/blog/2008/10/wrestling-with-the-zombie-spri.shtml

Re:Cogent Disregards Agreement with Sprint

[superbus1929]

That disregards the problem entirely.

1) Why the hell are third parties cutting off traffic to other networks? This affects other businesses that have nothing to do with this dispute.

2) Why was no one notified? My customer is a large scale business with locations all over the world; their Canadian locations cannot connect (via VPN) to their American counterparts. This is VERY BAD, and is causing my customer to incur additional costs to get in a secondary ISP ASAP.

3) How is Sprint going to legitimately justify themselves when customers decide that this is a breach of contract and decide to go elsewhere?

Re:Cogent Disregards Agreement with Sprint

[uncreativ]

That sounds like the most likely explanation for what happened--and Cogent just got ahead of the PR by doing their press release. I never really did understand though why tier 1 carriers insist on the traffic being approximately equal in each direction between themselves. A residential user downloads more than than business customers upload on average. So what? By that I mean, both sending and receiving ends on an internet connection are paying for the service so why does it matter which direction the traffic is flowing?

Re:Cogent Disregards Agreement with Sprint

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you know that an executive has made a serious mistake? When your P.R. department is forced to register an account on /. to explain his decision.

Now Google has a reason to light up all their fiber and kick you and your company's petty squabbles (which just happen to screw over hundreds of your ISP customers) the hell off the internet. Good riddance.

Re:Cogent Disregards Agreement with Sprint

[Anonymous Coward]

As a result of Cogent's refusal, Sprint was forced to terminate the commercial interconnection agreement and disconnect its network from Cogent's. Cogent's posturing is nothing more than an effort to divert attention away from its' contractual obligations...

Well, Sprint is the one that disconnected from Cogent. What about Sprint customers, like me, who have websites hosted by web hosts that use Cogent? Are we just going to be screwed while you duke this out via litigation?

BTW, you might consider letting customer service and tech support reps know what's going on so that they don't appear completely ignorant about the situation when irate customers like me call your company.

Re:Cogent Disregards Agreement with Sprint

[Anonymous Coward]

You realize that Cogent is sending all that data to you because your customers are requesting it from them, right?

Please make sure to re-assign the person at Sprint who suggested that your own customers' eyeballs are not worth carrying Cogent's answers to their requests for data to a position more well-suited to their unique abilities and strengths.

Re:Cogent Disregards Agreement with Sprint

[ChrisCampbell47]

Sprint Spokesman wrote:
to divert attention away from its' contractual obligations

Ouch! Even English majors can't keep this silly grammar stuff straight anymore.

See below.

How Could This Possibly Be Good For..

[Vortran]

Sprint? Much less any of their customers?

I hope not being a lawyer doesn't somehow cloud my ability to reason this one out. I just can't see how/why unilaterally blocking traffic is in Sprint's best interest?

Thanks in advance to any replies from folks whose minds aren't all cramped up today like mine.

Vortran out

Re:How Could This Possibly Be Good For..

[LWATCDR]

Same thing for Cogent.
Cogent peered with Sprint as for a trial period. They failed to me there obligations to Sprint and then refused to pay.
They where given notice that this would happen and they did nothing.
Funny how Sprint is getting the blame for this.

Math Repo

[dcollins]

"...the main difference between mathematicians and lawyers is that the mathematician's love for bizarre, pedantic arguments stays in the ivory towers."

We'd like that encryption back on your credit card and bank transfers, please.

Oh, and the compression on your JPEG images, we'll take that now, as well.

And the binary logic computing device, while we're at it.

The free service is only if you're on-net

[billstewart]

One part of Cogent's business model is selling to multiple-tenant business buildings, where they can stick a router in the basement and run Fast Ethernet connections to multiple customers, and most of the 1300 buildings where they're on-net are either that kind of arrangement or else businesses they've built connections to directly (including some hosting centers.) For the MTU market, what this means is that all it costs them is some inside wiring and a bit of extra traffic on their free peering links.

Back around 2000 they were selling Fast Ethernet to this market for about the price most other carriers charged for 2-3 T1s (i.e. 3-4 Mbps for $2-4K.) I don't think most of their customers expected sustained dependable throughput of 100 Mbps for that price - but just about everybody expected to get more than 3 Mbps almost all the time, so it was a win, especially as a second carrier connection.

Re:The free service is only if you're on-net

[ePhil_One]

Back around 2000 they were selling Fast Ethernet to this market for about the price most other carriers charged for 2-3 T1s (i.e. 3-4 Mbps for $2-4K.) I don't think most of their customers expected sustained dependable throughput of 100 Mbps for that price - but just about everybody expected to get more than 3 Mbps almost all the time, so it was a win, especially as a second carrier connection.

You might not have expected it, but they delivered it. We signed up for Cogent when our OC-3 ran past its 3 month install (it eventually too 15+ months); we received reliable 50Mbps links on a 100Mbps circuit. We ran this link at a steady 50Mbps 24x7x365, andwe were actively considering upgrading to the Gigabit service when I left because it had been so good.

Keep in mind, it was a Half Duplex Fast Ethernet connection, so that is very close to real world maximums.

Renesys Blog article on the depeering

[billstewart]

Renesys is a fairly neutral source for information about peering (as opposed to Cogent's press release, which is obviously their side of the story.) The Forbes article is good perspective, but it's from before Sprint dropped Cogent. BTW, Sprint and Cogent have only been peering for two years; before that Cogent had to pay to connect to them.

Re:Oh, good. Well, if they're already SCREWING

[davidsyes]

people, people need an analog to a meat-grinder chastity belt. Flip that switch and grind that dick up!

What's the Internet? And IPv6 is worse, BTW!

[billstewart]

He _was_ talking in a more general sense, but it's important to keep track of the real details behind that, because generalities aren't always correct in specific cases, and blhack's posting is really on target. The IPv4 parts of the Internet are mostly connected to each other, though not always; IPv6, on the other hand, is a bunch of little islands that might almost be coordinated enough to call itself an archipelago.

My home router is on the Internet. You can send packets to its IP addresses (though not all of them actually have machines answering them) because I'm paying my ISP to deliver packets addressed to my router, and my ISP is connected somehow to your ISP. If I stop paying my ISP, they'll stop sending me packets, and stop accepting packets I send them. That wouldn't mean that my ISP had stopped providing "full internet service" to its other customers, or that yours had stopped doing so, it would just mean that you and I couldn't connect to each other unless I started paying my bill. And similarly, if you're hosting "Fulan-gong.com", your packets aren't going to get to China no matter how much you pay your ISP, but that doesn't mean they're ripping you off.

ISPs can either connect to each other for free ("peering"), or the smaller one can pay the bigger one $X/Mbps to access its services ("transit"). There are lots of pairs of companies who find it worthwhile to peer for free - typically eyeball services and content services - and in the US, there are about two dozen "Tier 1" ISPs who are big enough to tell everybody "Either you pay me, or we peer with each other for free is you're big enough for me to care about you, but I'm not going to pay you."

Cogent is the bottom end of the Tier 1 market. They carry a huge amount of traffic, because they're cheap and sell to lots of content providers, but their ability to convince other Tier 1 ISPs that it's worth peering with them for free has always been marginal. (For instance, they've only been peering with Sprint for two years.) And occasionally somebody drops them.

It's going to take a lot to get IPv6 into a usably interconnected network. Sure, it's nice to get an IPv6 address and some limited functionality, but most ISPs aren't connecting to each other on native IPv6, and even with tunneling over IPv4 it's pretty sparse.

bah

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm just frustrated that I can't get to sites like groklaw.net, macsales.com (makers of the modbook mac tablet), and of course cogentco.com --not that I would ever have gone to their site before.

Damn our XO WiMax link not being up and running just yet.

IMHO the "origin of traffic" metric is flawed.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

I'm not sure what metric Sprint uses to decide that Cogent is getting the better part of the deal. But one of the companies in a previous Cogent dispute was upset that far more packets crossing the peering points originated at Cogent than on their net.

IMHO that metric is nuts. For instance: When a user on network A connects to a stream server on network B, virtually all the packets "originate" on network B. Is this a "service" for the customer on network A or the server on network B? Why should network B be expected to pay network A for the bandwidth whose use is initiated by network A's customer?

My answer: The connection is a service to BOTH customers.

Now it may make sense for one network to bill another if most of the transport expense is borne by one of them. For instance: If network A is a long-distance backbone and network A is a municipal island. And it would certainly make sense for a network serving as a middle-man transport between the networks that have the customers to expect payment (or some other reciprocal service) from BOTH of the customers' network. But (unlike the initiation of a phone call) the "from" address of a packet does NOT inherently assign more "blame" for the transport than the "to" address.

Re:What's the Internet? And IPv6 is worse, BTW!

[Sparr0]

So, the point is, while I am still paying my ISP, and you are still paying your ISP, if one of them is not delivering packets to/from me/you, one of them is not fulfilling its contract with one of us. If your ISP rejects packets that I try to send you, then it has likely violated its SLA with you, and vice versa. You are paying them to give you the traffic addressed to you and [try to] deliver traffic from you. When they start rejecting traffic to you, they are no longer providing the service you are paying them for.

So if I start my own network, I get to peer free?

[George_Ou]

Using your newly defined metric, I get to start my own tiny network and peer with all of the tier 1 providers for free right? Heck, I demand free peering with my broadband provider and my home network today!

explains my sprint service failure

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess this explains why my sprint mobile broadband quit working - my area cell towers must go through cogent . . . sounds like time to say "buh bye!" to sprint . . .

not if there customer cancels, idiot

[SuperBanana]

You'll discover with big lines that the providers have a good level of things they have to do for you. The bigger the line, the more they are bound by. IF they pull shit like that, well it's something that can get them hit with a large suit in court. They don't get to just cut things off if they are annoyed with you.

What the fuck? You got modded 4, Insightful, for ignoring a key part: the dude saying he'd call up his ISP and demand they shut off his line?!

Re:So if I start my own network, I get to peer fre

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Using your newly defined metric, I get to start my own tiny network and peer with all of the tier 1 providers for free right?

If your tiny network buys a dark fiber loop coveing about half the continental US, lights it up, you rent rack space at co-location peering points with a Tier I in both Chicago and LA (and, as second-comer, maybe buy some line cards ports for their routers to hook up to you), set up routes to transport their customers' east-half-US traffic to your LA customers from Chicago and their customers' west-coast traffic to your Chicago customers from LA, then yes, you'd qualify. (They might owe you. Transport some of traffic between their LA and Chicago customers, or between LA and Chicago for connection between their customers and those of another Tier I peer and the WOULD owe you - at least credit toward your customers' traffic over their pipes to endpoints on THEIR peers or more than a half-continent away on their own nets.)

Peer with 'em to hook up the people in your neighborhood to the rest of the Internet and you owe them big-time. Granted you're providing local transport, termination, and customer service. But they and their other high-tier peers are providing essentialy all of the long-haul (of which half the bill should go to your customers) and you're getting all the customer revenue. So you need to fork out.

In the first case you might cut a deal with them to skip the accounting and billing overhead and just swap traffic. (Though you'd both keep measuring things, so if the deal turns out to be too one-sided you can renegotiate when it's up for renewal. Like Sprint and Cogent.)

My issue isn't with the billing arrangements. Just about what is a reasonable choice of metric.

After all, we don't want to double the bandwidth consumption by modifying the protocols so traffic consumers send an equivalent volume of garbage back toward servers, just to work around an ill-considered accounting metric that overbills the ISPs who feed the providers of services and underbills those who feed the consumers of them.

Any lawyers out there

[collectorpro]

Calling all class action lawyers out there. As an online merchant (and a Sprint broadband customer) I wonder if we can band together and get suits going against both parties...... http://sprint-cogent.blogspot.com/ BH

Eyeballs vs Content ?

[droopycom]

It seems like Sprint connects a lot of Consumers, and that Cogent connect a lots of Businesses (aka Content Providers).

So, obviously, the traffic is going to flow mostly from Contents to Eyeballs.

Now, the Consumers pay a lot of money (to Sprint)just to get Content "in" their computers, and the Businesses pay a lot (to Cogent) to get their Content "out" to consumers.

So when Cogent and Sprint connect, who pays for what ? Should Cogent pay for data "out" to Sprint? Or should Sprint for data "in" from Cogent ?

Now, Consumers usually pay flat-rate for unlimited content, but Content Providers pay by the amount of data they send. There is probably a good reason that it has become this way. So in a sense, it would seem logical that Cogent pay as volume increase.