net neutrality peering dispute between CenturyTel/Qwest and Cogent in Dallas

Sat Aug 15 17:32:38 UTC 2015

In my 20+ yrs now of playing this game, "everyone" has had a turn thinking
their content/eyeballs are special and should get free "peering".

On Sat, Aug 15, 2015 at 1:59 PM, Mike Hammett <nanog at ics-il.net> wrote:

> Arrogance is the only reason I can think of why the incumbents think that
> way. I'd be surprised if any competitive providers (regardless of their
> market dominance) would expect free peering.
>
>
>
>
> -----
> Mike Hammett
> Intelligent Computing Solutions
> http://www.ics-il.com
>
>
>
> Midwest Internet Exchange
> http://www.midwest-ix.com
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
>
> From: "Owen DeLong" <owen at delong.com>
> To: "Matthew Huff" <mhuff at ox.com>
> Cc: nanog at nanog.org
> Sent: Saturday, August 15, 2015 11:44:57 AM
> Subject: Re: net neutrality peering dispute between CenturyTel/Qwest and
> Cogent in Dallas
>
> This issue isn’t limited to Cogent.
>
> There is this bizarre belief by the larger eyeball networks (and CC, VZ,
> and TW are the worst offenders, pretty much in that order) that they are
> entitled to be paid by both the content provider _AND_ the eyeball user for
> carrying bits between the two.
>
> In a healthy market, the eyeball providers would face competition and the
> content providers would simply ignore these demands and the eyeballs would
> buy from other eyeball providers.
>
> Unfortunately, especially in the US, we don’t have a healthy market. In
> the best of circumstances, we have oligopolies and in the worst places, we
> have effective (or even actual) monopolies.
>
> For example, in the area where I live, the claim you will hear is that
> there is competition. With my usage patterns, that’s a choice between
> Comcast (up to 30/7 $100/mo), AT&T DSL (1.5M/384k $40/mo+) and wireless (Up
> to 30/15 $500+/month).
>
> I’m not in some rural backwater or even some second-tier metro. I’m within
> 10 miles of the former MAE West and also within 10 miles of Equinix SV1 (11
> Great Oaks). There’s major fiber bundles within 2 miles of my house. I’m
> near US101 and Capitol Expressway in San Jose.
>
> The reason that things are this way, IMHO, is because we have allowed
> “facilities based carriers” to leverage the monopoly on physical
> infrastructure into a monopoly for services over that infrastructure.
>
> The most viable solution, IMHO, is to require a separation between
> physical infrastructure providers and those that provide services over that
> infrastructure. Breaking the tight coupling between the two and requiring
> physical infrastructure providers to lease facilities to operators on an
> equal footing for all operators will reduce the barriers to competition in
> the operator space. It will also make limited competition in the facilities
> space possible, though unlikely.
>
> This model exists to some extent in a few areas that have municipal
> residential fiber services, and in most of those localities, it is working
> well.
>
> That’s one of the reasons that the incumbent facilities based carriers
> have lobbied so hard to get laws in states where a city has done this that
> prevent other cities from following suit.
>
> Fortunately, one of the big gains in recent FCC rulings is that these laws
> are likely to be rendered null and void.
>
> Unfortunately, there is so much vested interest in the status quo that
> achieving this sort of separation is unlikely without a really strong grass
> roots movement. Sadly, the average sound-bite oriented citizen doesn’t know
> (or want to learn) enough to facilitate such a grass-roots movement, so if
> we want to build such a future, we have a long slog of public education and
> recruitment ahead of us.
>
> In the mean time, we’ll get to continue to watch companies like CC, VZ, TW
> screw over their customers and the content providers their customers want
> to reach for the sake of extorting extra money from both sides of the
> transaction.
>
> Owen
>
> > On Aug 15, 2015, at 06:40 , Matthew Huff <mhuff at ox.com> wrote:
> >
> > It's only partially about net neutrality. Cogent provides cheap
> bandwidth for content providers, and sends a lot of traffic to eyeball
> networks. In the past, peering partners expected symmetrical load sharing.
> Cogent feels that eyeball networks should be happy to carry their traffic
> since the customers want their services, the eyeball networks want Cogent
> to pay them extra. When there is congestion, neither side wants to upgrade
> their peeing until this is resolved, so they haven't. This has been going
> on for at least 5 years, and happens all over the cogent peering map.
> >
> > Depending on what protocol you are using, it can be an issue or not. Our
> end users on eyeball networks had difficulty maintaining VPN connections.
> We had to drop our Cogent upstream and work with our remaining upstream
> provides to traffic engineer around Cogent. YMMV.
> >
> >
> >
> > ----
> > Matthew Huff | 1 Manhattanville Rd
> > Director of Operations | Purchase, NY 10577
> > OTA Management LLC | Phone: 914-460-4039
> > aim: matthewbhuff | Fax: 914-694-5669
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: NANOG [mailto:nanog-bounces at nanog.org] On Behalf Of Jordan
> Hamilton
> > Sent: Friday, August 14, 2015 5:31 PM
> > To: nanog at nanog.org
> > Subject: net neutrality peering dispute between CenturyTel/Qwest and
> Cogent in Dallas
> >
> > I have several customers that are having packet loss issues, the packet
> loss appears to be associated with a Cogent router interface of
> 38.104.86.222. My upstream provider is telling me that the packet loss is
> being caused by a net neutrality peering dispute between CenturyTel/Quest
> and Cogent in Dallas. I did some quick googling to see if I could come up
> with any articles or something like that I could provide to my customers
> and did not see anything. Anyone know any details?
> >
> > Thanks
> >
> > Jordan Hamilton
> > Senior Telecommunications Engineer
> >
> > Empire District Electric Co.
> > 720 Schifferdecker
> > PO Box 127
> > Joplin, MO 64802
> >
> > Ph: 417-625-4223
> > Cell: 417-388-3351
> >
> >
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