Slashdot Mirror
The Other Side of the Sprint Vs. Cogent Depeering
Swoolley writes "A month back this community discussed the Sprint vs. Cogent depeering. Now a story I wrote for Forbes.com tells the inside story of the fight, based on the lawsuits the two companies filed against each other in Virginia state court. For once, thanks to those suits, the public gets to see the details of a confidential peering agreement between two of the Internet's largest autonomous systems, as well as the circumstances leading up to the depeering. (Which company is in the right? Read the facts and decide for yourself.) While some people have argued that the depeering is reason for more government regulation, the Forbes story makes the case that details of the recent Cogent vs. Sprint fight argue for exactly the opposite: keeping the Internet backbones free of government meddling."
Uh, no. Sprint is 100% in the wrong here, and the inevitable settlement with Cogent will confirm that.
Sprint made a contract with Cogent saying that they would peer with them after a trial period if the traffic was equal. It was. Sprint does not deny that.
Essentially, the agreement was beneficial to them both. Sprint was able to get faster connections to Cogent customers, and Cogent customers got faster connections to Sprint.
Sprint decided they wanted more money, though, and decided to change the deal from "equal traffic" to "equal traffic over a certain level". They stand to gain a whopping 0.004% of their current income by going after Cogent. They've already lost far more than that on customer ill-will by cutting off Cogent. It should give you how stupid a move this was for Sprint.
Sprint is, as always, the villain here.