Level 3's side of the story

Sat Oct 8 19:10:03 UTC 2005

>
> Level 3 claims Cogent is sending far more traffic than Level3 to  
> Cogent.
> Thus, Level3's viewpoint is that Cogent relies on them more than  
> they rely
> on Cogent.  Thus, it no longer makes sense in their view point to  
> maintain
> a free interconnection as there is no similar balance of traffic  
> ratio.
>

This has  always bugged me.  Is a Cogent customer sending traffic to  
a L3 customer or is a L3 customer requesting the traffic from a  
Cogent customer?  Traffic is traffic,  L3 has eyeballs,  Cogent has  
content producers.  Of course most of the traffic will flow from  
Cogent -> L3.  L3 chose to sell to eyeball customers, Cogent chose to  
sell to content producers.  If the L3 customers didn't create the  
demand for the traffic then I'm sure Cogent wouldn't be sending them  
the traffic.

IMHO the only valid complaint L3 has is wether Cogent is hot-potato  
routing the traffic causing L3 to 'incur more cost'.  That should all  
be spelled out in the peering agreement.

--
Matthew S. Crocker
Vice President
Crocker Communications, Inc.
Internet Division
PO BOX 710
Greenfield, MA 01302-0710
http://www.crocker.com