Cogent & HE

Thu Jun 9 23:49:58 UTC 2011

On Thu, Jun 09, 2011 at 06:26:01PM -0500, Jimmy Hess wrote:
> Er, Sorry... you are kind of siding with Cogent and claiming HE 
> responsible without any logically sound argument explicitly stated 
> that supports that position...

You're confused, read again. :)

> I would consider them both responsible for the partition, with Cogent 
> slightly more complicit, in that Cogent's expectation of selling HE 
> transit is slightly less reasonable than HE's expectation of Cogent 
> peering with HE.

Cogent is (unfortunately, note I have no particular love for Cogent 
here) a transit free network, who peers with every other Tier 1. HE is a 
perfectly fine network, but they are not even CLOSE to a transit free 
network. HE buys transit from multiple other networks, including 
3549/Global Crossing and 1299/Telia (both easily visible in the routing 
table), which they use to reach Cogent for IPv4.

There is absolutely NO requirement that there be a direct 
interconnection between HE and Cogent. None, period, and if you think 
otherwise you are vastly confused about routing on the Internet. Let me 
say this again, there is NO requirement that HE buy transit from Cogent, 
but there is a requirement that HE buy transit from *SOMEONE* if they 
are not a transit free network.

HE has deliberately chosen NOT to use transit for their IPv6 routes, in 
order to force people like Cogent to peer with them so they can become 
an "IPv6 Tier 1", and thus you have a partition. These are the same 
tactics and strategies used by every other network in pursuit of 
becoming a Tier 1, including Cogent, and everyone complained their ass 
off when Cogent caused partitioning several times during THEIR peering 
disputes on the road to their current transit free status. If your 
answer is "I like HE better than Cogent so I'm willing to overlook it", 
that's fine, but you're just making things up if you're trying to claim 
that they AREN'T causing this partition. 

-- 
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)