Cogent/Level 3 depeering

Warren Kumari warren at kumari.net
Wed Oct 5 20:50:51 UTC 2005



On Oct 5, 2005, at 12:12 PM, Mike Tancsa wrote:

>
> At 02:47 PM 05/10/2005, Douglas Dever wrote:
>
>
>> > fact remains that Cogent is not providing the service I'm paying  
>> them
>> > for and they need to get it fixed.
>>
>> Really?  As you already pointed out, your packets are reaching their
>> destination.  So, they don't "need" to get anything "fixed."
>>
>
> I think what people are upset about is that you now have less  
> redundancy now if you are a cogent transit customer.  If I tell my  
> customers, "I have 3 full transit links", I now have to put an *  
> there.   If my 2 non cogent links go down, I dont have a full  
> visibility of the Internet. I see everything, except Level3.  It  
> becomes more acute if you have just 2 transit links-- Cogent and  
> one other.  What if your other provider has a lossy path to Level  
> 3 ?  You cant work around it by preferencing 174 3356
>
>         ---Mike

You have always needed that asterisk, the only thing that changes is  
the scale of things...
"3 full transit links" is really only marketing speak, the same thing  
applies to "the full Internet" and "Tier <anything>".

I run Billy_Bobs_Florist.com[0]. Lets say I filter all routes from  
your provider, or just your routes (don't ask me why, it's my  
network...). Are you going to go after your provider and demand  
credit from them because I have chosen to ignore some routes?  No?  
But now you no longer have "the full Internet"...

Or I run some huge "Tier 1" (shudders) and all of the fiber to  
Singapore (on someone else's network) gets cut. You can no longer  
reach "the full Internet" - do I owe you money? Ok, how about the  
only T1 to some site that you feel like browsing to goes down? Now do  
I owe you credit? But you no longer have "the full Internet", nor  
"full routes".

Or lets say I run "Billy Bob ISP" ( a small ISP that buys  
connectivity from only one place, ISP_X). You are a customer of ISP_X  
and I now sell you a circuit and give you full tables (from my view).  
Do you really have n + 1 "full transit links" now?

When you buy connectivity from a provider the only thing that you  
really get any guarantee on is whatever is written on your contract   
- and I would be very surprised if it says anything about reaching  
all hosts connected to the Internet at all times[1]. Sure you have  
some expectations of what they will provide (full tables will be some  
large number of routes, they connect to a bunch of other networks,  
they don't filter port 80 (or anything else for that matter)), but  
unless your contract actually specifies all of this, you are on your  
own. But don't worry, you do have some power in all this  - you can  
vote with your wallet...

Warren.


[0] Ok, so I don't really, but....
[1] If it does, I want whoever wrote your contract working for me....

-- 
There are only 10 types of people in this world -- those who  
understand binary arithmetic and those who don't.





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