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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."
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.
NewslilySocial News. No lolcats allowed.
Net neutrality can't force tier1/2 network carriers to peer.
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.
Well, for Cogent this seems to be a standard practise, so I'd say not enough...
Internet Health Report
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.
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.
Oh, right, sorry about that. Put "public" in for both the username and password.
I touch computers in naughty places
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.
Nothing worthwhile ever happens before noon
Not when Sprint is actively blackholing and pretending that the data went through, as they are now.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
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
New things are always on the horizon
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.
this is my sig
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.
this is my sig
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.
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.