Cogent/Level 3 depeering

Wed Oct 5 19:01:21 UTC 2005

On Oct 5, 2005, at 1:43 PM, Jeff Shultz wrote:

>
> Matthew Crocker wrote:
>>>> I opened a billing/support ticket with Cogent.   I'm not planning  
>>>> on paying my bill or continuing the contract if they cannot  
>>>> provide full BGP tables and full Internet transport (barring  
>>>> outages).   Luckily I have 2 other providers so I can still reach  
>>>> Level 3.
>>>>
>>>
>>> I'm curious where in your contract you think Cogent guaranteed you  
>>> connectivity to Level 3?
>
> Undereducated rant to follow...
>
> While I realize that the "nuke survivable" thing is probably an old 
> wives tale, it seems ridiculous that "the Internet" can't adjust by 
> routing any packets that used to go directly from Cogent to Level 3 
> though some 3rd (and) 4th (and) 5th set of providers that are 
> connected in some fashion to both...
>
> Level 3 and Cogent can't be operating in a vacuums - if we can get to 
> Kevin Bacon in 6 degrees, Level 3 and Cogent should be able to get to 
> each other in under 30 hops through other providers.
>
> And why isn't this apparently happening automatically? Pardon the 
> density of my brain matter here, but I thought that was what BGP was 
> all about?
>
> I welcome any education the group wishes to drop on me in this matter.

If nobody filtered BGP at all (in or out), you would have the state you 
are expecting.  However, you would have both a capacity problem, and an 
economic failure, as you may well end up with cogent trying to send all 
(much) of it's level3 destined traffic through a customer's connection 
with much smaller pipes... or overloading it's connectivity to one of 
its other peers.  The economic failure comes because now you're 
expecting a third party to transit packets between cogent and level3 
without being paid for it (and some of those connections are metered).