Sprint / Cogent dispute over?

Mon Nov 3 15:01:48 UTC 2008

At 06:54 PM 11/2/2008, Daniel Roesen wrote:
>On Sun, Nov 02, 2008 at 04:40:20PM -0500, Randy Epstein wrote:
> > Problem resolved?
>
>https://www.sprint.net/cogent.php

Reading this accounting of Sprint's side of the story reveals 
something that's not too surprising about Sprint. They've got serious 
accounting problems.

The trial of peering they talk about was for three months in 2007, 
ending in September 2007. They claim to have billed Cogent at the end 
of it, though knowing Sprint's billing (having had them fail to send 
me bills, then hit me with late fees) they probably can't prove that. 
But this is a YEAR later.

They let an account linger for a year without collecting or 
terminating the services provided. That's their own damned fault. 
This indicates poor management of Accounts Receivable. That's your 
problem, Sprint, deal with it.

Also in this document is a complaint that Cogent failed to 
disconnect. Excuse me? This was a trial PEERING agreement. That 
implies one or a series of point-to-point connections. That implies 
EITHER party can disconnect the circuits (in reality, the physical 
circuit doesn't even matter, just shut down the BGP session(s)).

So Sprint failed to manage Accounts Receivable and left this 
"temporary" circuit in place too long. Some bean counter noticed this 
a year later. Way to go Sprint.

As I've noted previously, Sprint hurt its own customers by the action 
taken. It's my guess they restored the circuit to avoid further 
damage to themselves that resulted from their actions.

It's interesting to see a biased, "blame Cogent first" mentality in 
so many postings on NANOG. Maybe they deserve it, maybe not. But 
after reading the traffic here, after living through the consequences 
of the Cogent/L3 depeering, and after reading what Sprint said on 
their page, my read on this is that Sprint's accounting department 
might need some house cleaning.