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

[djcapelis]

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

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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

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?

[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?

[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?

[Ihmhi]

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

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?

[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.

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

[da_matta]

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

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

[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.

note to self

[Hes Nikke]

boycot sprint for fracturing the internet

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.

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

[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

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

[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.

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.

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."

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?

[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?

[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

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.

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.

A table is worth a thousand pictures...

[slushdork]

Internet Health Report

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.

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

[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.

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.

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"

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

[DikSeaCup]

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

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: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

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.