Cogent <-> Verizon peering congestion

Wed Feb 5 01:40:30 UTC 2014

Just to make something clear.    I do not own any stock, interest or
have any official relationship with Verizon or Cogent.     The
opinions expressed are mine and mine alone as I have come to
understand some of the relationship without the aid of any privileged
information.

On Tue, Feb 4, 2014 at 8:08 PM, Edward Roels <edwardroels at gmail.com> wrote:
> Cogent support uses the same response when inquiring about Comcast,
> CenturyLink, Tata, AT&T etc.

Yup, certainly a common thread there.     It wouldn't take a lot of
digging to determine that those "peers" are most likely compensated in
some way shape or form.   Hence the lack of response by the remote
"peer" to upgrade what would most likely be a paid peer.

> If the "Tier 1s" are really keeping each other congested, are they not
> creating an environment where you have to buy from each of them to have a
> chance at congestion free paths? Or peer around them.

The term tier 1 is a marketing term.   The last time I looked Cogent
was default free, but certainly not settlement free.    Good luck
peering around a lot of the networks in which they have congestion
from.    The only real way would be to order additional capacity, buy
transit or live with the situation long enough for customers complain
to the remote network.   If that doesn't work then force a partition
with the end objective of Cogent to change from a compensated peer to
a settlement free peer.    It's a fun game, it's unfortunate that
customer flows have to be used to force it.

Let me help translate the canned response.

>> All I have gotten from Cogent is a canned response:
>>
>> ---
>> The latency and/or packet loss that you are experiencing to this
>> destination is due to occasional high traffic with Verizon.

    We are sorry that we transmit more traffic to Verizon than we are
willing to pay Verizon for.

>> We have
>> repeatedly requested augments to these congestion points and hope Verizon
>> will comply soon.

     We have demanded that the compensated peers be converted to
settlement free peers with greater capacity, with little to no
response.

>>  While this has been escalated internally to the CEO
>> level, we encourage you to also contact Verizon customer support with your
>> concerns and complaints.

     Our CEO is aware that this will cost money but is unwilling to
pay for additional bandwidth, so we are in a stalemate and want
customers to complain to Verizon in the hopes that the squeaky wheel
will get the grease or in other terms, free capacity.

>> Their delay is a major impediment to internet
>> traffic overall and contrary to net neutrality requirements.

    Since the connectivity is compensated, Verizon refuses to provide
additional bandwidth at an acceptable (free) cost.    So, no money
equals no additional customer capacity.

>> Our peering
>> engineers will continue to address this on a daily basis until resolved.

    Our peering folks will continue to pester Verizon's non-commercial
folks by requesting settlement free peers but until enough people
complain to Verizon the requests will fall on deaf ears.

thanks,
charles