Sprint v. Cogent, some clarity & facts

Mon Nov 3 19:01:05 UTC 2008

* Valdis Kletnieks:

> On Mon, 03 Nov 2008 10:26:59 +0100, Florian Weimer said:
>> * Patrick W. Gilmore:
>
>> > 3. Standard transit contracts do not guarantee full connectivity
>> 
>> If this were true, why would end users (or, more generally, not
>> significantly multi-homed networks) buy transit from such networks?
>
> Quite frankly, if any potential transit provider tried to make
> noises about being able to *guarantee* full connectivity, I'd show
> him the door.

Obviously, nothing won't stop them from disconnecting customers which
are not sufficiently multi-homed, which might adversely affect me,
independently of the size of the disconnected network or the nature of
the dispute.

That being said, there's a difference between disconnecting a customer
and making sure, through action or inaction, that their network is no
longer reachable from yours.  I'd need to litigate to be sure, but I
think the latter actually violates contracts we have at work.

> Consider the average length of an AS path.

Well, in this context, the affected AS paths are really, really
short. 8-)

> Now consider that your AS is at one end, your transit provider is
> the next hop - and there's often 5 or 6 or more AS hops past that.
> And that potential transit provider has absolutely *no* control over
> what some backhoe just did to connectivity 4 AS down the path...

There's a difference between random events such as backhoes and
self-inflicting damage as the result of DSWs.

> For example, look at the traceroute from my desktop to where your mail
> originated:

I expect LF.net to isolate me from the results of those wars, both by
making the right decisions in advance, and to act to correct problems
when they arise.  This hasn't always been possible.  For instance,
during one of the European routing wars in the 90s, I couldn't reach
ftp.funet.fi for a couple of days.