Level 3's side of the story

Richard A Steenbergen ras at e-gerbil.net
Sat Oct 8 03:45:27 UTC 2005


On Fri, Oct 07, 2005 at 11:27:09PM -0400, Patrick W. Gilmore wrote:
> 
> Is there any particular reason you think Level 3 will buy transit?   
> Or that they give a rat's ass what tier _you_ think they are?
> 
> Perhaps Cogent will have had time to buy transit?
> 
> Or perhaps - just perhaps - the Internet will be bifurcated for the  
> time being.  There is nothing intrinsically wrong with an Internet  
> which isn't fully connected.   Each business will work out its own  
> business needs and use the transit provider(s) they see fit.
> 
> I am a bit confused about why so many people think this is such a bad  
> thing.  Personally, I believe there is room in the market for partial  
> transit providers.  I guess that theory is about to be tested.

My advice to these people is, if you don't like the connectivity being 
provided, don't buy from that provider. Closing your wallet is a lot more 
powerful than flapping your lips.

Personally I suspect there will still be an extensive market of people who 
are multihomed to Cogent and someone else, and that these people will 
continue to buy the product even without the 2.5% of the Internet that is 
single homed to (3). The biggest complainers so far seem to be from the 
people who didn't understand what they were signing on for, and a lot of 
those are the Verio customers who Cogent purchased. Maybe Cogent is 
willing to part with those customers, maybe their contracts are coming due 
and they won't be renewing, or maybe the customers should have thought 
better before signing a contract which allowed the transfer of the 
contract to a completely different entity without an opportunity to 
cancel. Certainly these are high-margin but low-bandwidth customers, maybe 
with enough complaints Cogent will be willing to stick them on a smaller 
seperate ASN which is willing to buy transit.

Or, if you really care about it that much, buy service from someone else, 
unplug your port, stop paying your bill, and maybe send back a nastygram 
which includes suggestions as to where Cogent can relocate the router card 
that you used to be attached to, along with helpful advice as to how it 
might be made to fit there. Cogent will not waste time or money on 
lawsuits for disgruntled ex-Verio T1 customers.

-- 
Richard A Steenbergen <ras at e-gerbil.net>       http://www.e-gerbil.net/ras
GPG Key ID: 0xF8B12CBC (7535 7F59 8204 ED1F CC1C 53AF 4C41 5ECA F8B1 2CBC)



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