The IPv6 Travesty that is Cogent's refusal to peer Hurricane Electric - and how to solve it

Matthew D. Hardeman mhardeman at ipifony.com
Thu Jan 21 18:44:56 UTC 2016


I’m inclined to agree with you, subject to some caveats:

1.  I think more Cogent customers need to be more vocal about it.  There hasn’t been an impetus to do so until recently.  Now real people (not network engineer sorts) are starting to use IPv6 for real.

2.  I agree with you in principle.  In an idea world, take HE and two others.  I would however still say that if you could only take two, take HE and take something other than Cogent.  It’s a win-win if the experience of single-home Cogent customers gets to be worse as a result.  Perhaps having things occasionally break — only for single-home Cogent customers — is a benefit.


> On Jan 21, 2016, at 12:40 PM, Daniel Corbe <dcorbe at hammerfiber.com> wrote:
> 
> 
>> On Jan 21, 2016, at 1:07 PM, Matthew D. Hardeman <mhardeman at ipifony.com> wrote:
>> 
>> Since Cogent is clearly the bad actor here (the burden being Cogent's to prove otherwise because HE is publicly on record as saying that they’d love to peer with Cogent), I’m giving serious consideration to dropping Cogent come renewal time and utilizing NTT or Zayo instead.
>> 
>> While that would not immediately solve the problem that if the NTT or Zayo link went down, single-homed Cogent customers would loose access to me via IPv6, I’m actually ok with that.  It at least lets ensures that when there is a problem, the problem affects only single-home Cogent clients.  Thus, the problem is borne exclusively by the people who pay the bad actor who is causing this problem.  That tends to get uncomfortable for the payee (i.e. Cogent).
>> 
>> 
> 
> Take two transit providers that aren’t in the group of (HE, Cogent).  Cogent is probably banking on this being the response; figuring that they have the financial resources to outlast HE if they’re both shedding customers.  
> 
> If you really wanted to stick it to Cogent, take 3 transit providers: HE and two of any other providers besides Cogent.  
> 
> Cogent clearly aren’t going to cave to their own customers asking them to peer with HE.  Otherwise it would have happened by now.  
> 
> Cogent sucks for lots of reasons and this one isn’t even in the top 5 IMHO.
> 
> 




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