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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."
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.
I touch computers in naughty places
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. :)
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
I wonder how many customers these two companies will have to lose before they realize that the right solution is to sack the lawyers.
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.
This is what the world might look like without Net Neutrality.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
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.
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.
Read Pynchon.
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.
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.
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.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
OK everyone, while you still have connectivity login to your boxes and do your OS's/distribution's equivalent of "apt-get install UUCP"
"Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead." A. Huxley
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
Can you write it again as a car analogy? I'm lost here.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
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
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
http://www.forbes.com/technology/forbes/2008/1013/064.html
0xfeedface
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.