Cogent/Level 3 depeering

Wed Oct 5 19:35:18 UTC 2005

Simon Lockhart wrote:

> Yes, it could have - I'm led to believe that one of the parties does purchase
> transit. However, moving all that traffic over transit rather than peering
> would cost them a significant amount of money - and as they're running their
> transit service at extremely low cost, they probably would find it hard to
> fund the use of transit to reach the other party.
> 
> Simon

Okay, here is how I see this war... which seems to be the proper term 
for it.

1. Level 3 is probably annoyed at Cogent for doing the extremely low 
cost transit thing, thus putting price pressures on other providers - 
including them. So they declared war.

2. Level 3's assault method is to drop peering with Cogent, in hopes 
this will force Cogent to purchase transit to them in some fashion (does 
Level 3 have an inflated idea of their own worth?), also forcing them to 
raise prices and hopefully (for Level 3) returning some stability to the 
market.

3. Cogent's counter-attack is to instead offer free transit to all 
single homed Level 3 customers instead, effectively stealing them (and 
their revenue) from Level 3... and lowering the value of Level 3 service 
some amount as well.

4. Next move, if they choose to make one, is Level 3's.

Fun. I think I'll stay in the trenches.

-- 
Jeff Shultz