Cogent/Level 3 depeering

Thu Oct 6 05:41:07 UTC 2005

On Oct 5, 2005, at 4:13 PM, Daniel Golding wrote:

> They can. Cogent has transit and is preventing traffic from  
> traversing its
> transit connection to reach Level(3). Level(3) does not have  
> transit - they
> are in a condition of settlement free interconnection (SFI). The  
> ball is in
> Cogent's court. This is not the first time or the second that they  
> have
> chosen to partition.

Cogent does purchase transit from Verio to Sprint, AOL, and other  
locations (but not to Level 3).  Perhaps Dan would like to explain  
why that is relevant to the discussion at hand?  Or why that puts the  
"ball" in Cogent's court?

And no, L3's "SFI" status does not mean it's Cogent's fault.

It is strange that people have to be reminded no network has the  
"right" to use any other network's resources without permission.   
Most people realize this in one direction.  For instance, the "tier  
ones" love to point out Cogent has no "right" to peer with Level 3.   
Absolutely correct.

What some people seem to forget is that Level 3 has no right to force  
Cogent to buy transit to get to Level 3.

If Level 3 doesn't mind not being able to pass packets to Cogent,  
that's fine.  If they do mind, they need to figure out a way to solve  
the problem - with Cogent.  The inverse is true as well.  As RAS  
said, it takes two to tango.

This problem will be solved "soon" (in human time - days, weeks at  
most).  One of the networks may go out of business, but that "solves"  
the problem because there would no longer be locations on the  
Internet someone couldn't reach.  I suspect it will be solved by less  
drastic means.

-- 
TTFN,
patrick

P.S. Does anyone else get that Baby Bell feeling whenever someone  
talks about being a "Tier One"?