Cogent - Google - HE Fun

Fri Mar 11 19:30:18 UTC 2016

> On Mar 11, 2016, at 04:57 , Dave Bell <me at geordish.org> wrote:
> 
> On 10 March 2016 at 15:55, William Herrin <bill at herrin.us> wrote:
>> It's Cogent's fault because: double-billing. Google should not have to
>> pay Cogent for a service which you have already paid Cogent to provide
>> to you. Cogent's demand is unethical. They intentionally fail to
>> deliver on the basic service expectation you pay them for and refuse
>> to do so unless a third party to your contract also pays them.
>> 
>> Google, by contrast, makes no demand that Cogent pay them even though
>> you are not paying Google for service. They offer "open peering," a
>> free interconnect via many neutral data centers.
> 
> I don't get this. Google are basically a hosting provider. If I set up
> my own website, I would expect to have to pay transit for it. If I ran
> a hosting business I would expect to pay transit. Why are google
> different?

No matter what kind of business I build, I don’t expect to pay transit
unless I am asking you to deliver packets to people who are not already
paying you.

Yes, if I make that request, I may also be paying transit for packets that
go to some or all of the users that are already paying you, but I would
expect in most cases, that is an artifact.

If I have content that your paying customers want and your paying customers
have enough demand for my content that it would fill one or more
interconnection-sized pipes (whatever your standard minimum interconnect
is, be that 1G, 10G, 100G, etc.), then I think it is reasonable to ask
for settlement free peering to reach those customers. If there isn’t
enough demand from your customers to justify that, then there are a few
other possibilities… Exchange points in common and public peering,
I give up on those customers, or, I pay you (or someone else) for transit.

I’m pretty sure in the case of Cogent<->Google the traffic level more than
justifies a reasonable number of PNIs in a diversity of locations.

> Its Google's decision to decide not to pay for transit for v6.
> Considering how open they are to peering, and how large their network
> it, it probably makes a lot of sense. If you need to connect to a
> transit provider, you can probably peer with google at the same
> location.

Depends on how you connect to said transit provider, but yeah, you can
either peer with Google yourself, or, you should be able to expect that
anyone you are paying for transit peers with Google as part of providing
you transit service to “the internet”.

It’s very hard to make a case that “Internet Access” can be sold if that
doesn’t include access to Google.

> Cogent is in the business of trying to provide transit. I understand
> there are probably good business cases where you may want to set up an
> SFI with someone like google, but at the end of the day that's their
> choice.

Sure, it’s their choice, but in so doing, there’s a valid case to be
made that they are not providing the contracted service to their transit
customers.

I don’t think anyone is saying “Cogent can’t do this”. I think we are
saying “Cogent’s customers may want to consider their rights and their
contracts with Cogent in this process.”

> I get the arguments that Cogent are supposed to be supplying a full
> view of the DFZ, but if Joe's Hosting Company refuses to pay anyone
> for transit, surely it is their own fault that their reachability is
> compromised?

Yes and no… How many of the Alexa 10, 50, 100, 500, 1000 are hosted
at Joe’s?

I think those numbers are a bit different from Google and like it or not,
there’s meaning to that.

Owen