Cogent/Level 3 depeering

Fri Oct 7 05:17:18 UTC 2005

Benson Schliesser wrote:
>Michael Dillon wrote:
>> P.S. would the Internet be worse off if all traffic
>.> exchange was paid for and there was no settlement
>> free interconnect at all? I.e. paid peering, paid
>> full transit and paid partial transit on the menu?
>Would you care to speculate on which party receives the greater benefit:
>the sender of bytes, or the receiver of bytes?

>If both the sender and receiver are being billed for the traffic by
>their respective (different) service providers (all other issues being
>equal) is one provider in a better position than the other?

>Cheers,
>-Benson

Having enable on a router, yet not having experience with peering in any
capacity I was wondering if this analogy holds water.

Please excuse the simple model, as I want to understand what other factors
may be involved (aside from contractual nuances)

Provider A has host/service/user traffic that we will call "Blue Bricks"
that need to be moved outside their network.
Provider B has host/service/user traffic that we will call "Red Bricks" that
need to be moved outside their network..

Both providers decide to meet at the corner and exchange 1 brick each on a
regular basis

let's say for 1000 cycles both providers meet and exchange blocks
successfully.

for the next 200 cycles Provider A brings his expected "blue brick" to the
corner, yet provider B brings two "red bricks".
While that was not expected .. it is acceptable in the short term.

then as time goes by Provider B begins to bring additional blocks, yet seems
not to notice the standard 1 block that provider A is bringing.

While fairly simple, this model explains that the disproportion of "blocks",
or traffic as it were, could be a cause of distress.

While I hear talk of "Price compression" and "lining pockets" respectively
from those who have chosen their position, based on what I've read here and
in other places, depeering is a non aggressive yet detrimental way to assert
the concerns of a peering provider who feels that the relationship has
become inequitable. I can see how the costs of arranging peering and
maintaining it can be quite sizable on both sides, but what other factors
could cause this type of depeering. Perhaps my view is over simplified, but
I don't see this as a black and white "bad guy" scenario. As previous posts
have (whether accurately or not) stated, Cogent was notified in advance of
Level 3's intentions and both companies had to know that they were shooting
themselves in the foot by playing this ever frustrating game of "chicken".

I welcome flames/education as this can't be as much of a dichotomy as it
seems to be

ST
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