Cogent/Level 3 depeering

Wed Oct 5 22:31:56 UTC 2005

On Wed, 5 Oct 2005, Patrick W. Gilmore wrote:

> Which network do you run, sir?  I find it useful to know which networks have
> engineers who understand not only "conf t" but also what the commands they
> type actually mean.

Obviously my attempt at being the cynic didn't play out to some folks. My
mention of BGP being capable of "working around" the lost connectivity was
an attempt to illustrate one of the Stupid Factors of these peering
agreements, as in the portion of my followup that you quoted:

> > The thinly veiled implication there is that "full mesh" is not a long term
> > effective way to run the backbone level transit, because dropping one peer
> > without an alternate path means that we get broken transit.  Yum.

This was my real meaning.  These backbone leve "free" peering agreements
that are still common form the [all too conveniently forgotten] SPOF of the
tier-1 space.

The price push that this depeering causes may be an artifact of market
pressure.  Personally, I see both parties as having their fingers on the
wrong buttons.  But when taking the role of the cynic, I couldn't care less
about what the market implications are -- I care that end users are f00ked
over in the aftermath.

-- 
-- Todd Vierling <tv at duh.org> <tv at pobox.com> <todd at vierling.name>