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

Sat Jan 23 14:31:41 UTC 2016

"I've said it before and I'll say it again: an ISP's refusal to 
maintain a settlement-free open peering policy is directly linked with 
said company's fraudulent double-billing for services." 

aaannnddd.. I'm done with that post. 

----- 
Mike Hammett 
Intelligent Computing Solutions 
http://www.ics-il.com 

Midwest Internet Exchange 
http://www.midwest-ix.com 

----- Original Message -----

From: "William Herrin" <bill at herrin.us> 
To: "Brandon Butterworth" <brandon at rd.bbc.co.uk> 
Cc: nanog at nanog.org 
Sent: Friday, January 22, 2016 7:03:34 PM 
Subject: Re: The IPv6 Travesty that is Cogent's refusal to peer Hurricane Electric - and how to solve it 

On Thu, Jan 21, 2016 at 1:52 PM, Brandon Butterworth 
<brandon at rd.bbc.co.uk> wrote: 
> I'd like to peer with all tier 1's, they are thus all bad as 
> they won't. 

Correct. 

I've said it before and I'll say it again: an ISP's refusal to 
maintain a settlement-free open peering policy is directly linked with 
said company's fraudulent double-billing for services. 

In case you don't see it, I'll explain: whatever fictions you may tell 
yourselves, your customers pay you to connect them to the entire 
Internet. So do the other guy's customers. Settlement free peering 
means that at no _additional_ charge to anyone, you accept the packets 
your customers have paid you to accept from the other guy's customers. 
And vice versa. Peering does not trade packets you haven't been paid 
for. That's another fiction. Peering only trades packets one of your 
customers has paid you for. 

I get from there to double-billing because the alternative to 
settlement free peering is a paid relationship. The other guy has to 
buy from you directly (becoming the second payer for each packet) or 
he has to buy from one of the peers you've accepted But the peers 
you've accepted are constrained by ratios an related technical 
requirements which functionally prevent them from adding a sizable 
amount of traffic from that other guy, so unless he's doing a trifling 
business he pretty much has to buy service from you. Even though 
another customer has already paid you to perform that activity, you 
refuse to do the job unless the second party also becomes your 
customer and pays you. Fraud. Hidden behind a wall of technical 
minutiae but fraud all the same. 

Don't get me wrong. You can cure this fraud without going to extremes. 
An open peering policy doesn't require you to buy hardware for the 
other guy's convenience. Let him reimburse you or procure the hardware 
you spec out if he wants to peer. Nor do you have to extend your 
network to a location convenient for the other guy. Pick neutral 
locations where you're willing to peer and let the other guy build to 
them or pay you to build from there to him. Nor does an open peering 
policy require you to give the other guy a free ride on your 
international backbone: you can swap packets for just the regions of 
your network in which he's willing to establish a connection. But not 
ratios and traffic minimums -- those are not egalitarian, they're 
designed only to exclude the powerless. 

Taken in this context, the Cogent/HE IPv6 peering spat is very simple: 
Cogent is -the- bad actor. 100%. 

Regards, 
Bill Herrin 

-- 
William Herrin ................ herrin at dirtside.com bill at herrin.us 
Owner, Dirtside Systems ......... Web: <http://www.dirtside.com/> 