net neutrality peering dispute between CenturyTel/Qwest and Cogent in Dallas

Owen DeLong owen at delong.com
Sat Aug 15 20:01:36 UTC 2015


Let me turn that on its head…

I don’t think anyone’s eyeballs are special.
I don’t think anyone’s content is special.

I think everyone should get free peering with any network whose customers 
expect to be able to reach that other network’s customers.

Ignoring for a moment the idea of maximizing effective avarice, think how
much better it would be for eyeballs and content providers alike if they
could all just peer directly settlement free and/or pay a single layer of
transit providers all of whom peered with each other
for free.

Time and time again we have repeatedly proven that increased interconnect
density and promiscuous settlement free peering reduce
costs, improve performance, and generally make the internet better for
all concerned.

Now, ask yourself… If everyone followed that model, would it actually reduce
the viability of any of the businesses in question?

IMHO, there’s only one yes answer here… If enough of the eyeball/content
providers are able to cooperate and peer with each other directly, you might
see a significant impact (reduction in need) on transit providers as their entire
business would become largely irrelevant.

That’s called cutting out the middle man. In almost every industry that has been
able to do so, it’s been considered a really good thing for everyone except the
middle man who rarely gets much sympathy.

Owen

> On Aug 15, 2015, at 10:32 , jim deleskie <deleskie at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> In my 20+ yrs now of playing this game, "everyone" has had a turn thinking
> their content/eyeballs are special and should get free "peering".
> 
> On Sat, Aug 15, 2015 at 1:59 PM, Mike Hammett <nanog at ics-il.net> wrote:
> 
>> Arrogance is the only reason I can think of why the incumbents think that
>> way. I'd be surprised if any competitive providers (regardless of their
>> market dominance) would expect free peering.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> -----
>> Mike Hammett
>> Intelligent Computing Solutions
>> http://www.ics-il.com
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Midwest Internet Exchange
>> http://www.midwest-ix.com
>> 
>> 
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> 
>> From: "Owen DeLong" <owen at delong.com>
>> To: "Matthew Huff" <mhuff at ox.com>
>> Cc: nanog at nanog.org
>> Sent: Saturday, August 15, 2015 11:44:57 AM
>> Subject: Re: net neutrality peering dispute between CenturyTel/Qwest and
>> Cogent in Dallas
>> 
>> This issue isn’t limited to Cogent.
>> 
>> There is this bizarre belief by the larger eyeball networks (and CC, VZ,
>> and TW are the worst offenders, pretty much in that order) that they are
>> entitled to be paid by both the content provider _AND_ the eyeball user for
>> carrying bits between the two.
>> 
>> In a healthy market, the eyeball providers would face competition and the
>> content providers would simply ignore these demands and the eyeballs would
>> buy from other eyeball providers.
>> 
>> Unfortunately, especially in the US, we don’t have a healthy market. In
>> the best of circumstances, we have oligopolies and in the worst places, we
>> have effective (or even actual) monopolies.
>> 
>> For example, in the area where I live, the claim you will hear is that
>> there is competition. With my usage patterns, that’s a choice between
>> Comcast (up to 30/7 $100/mo), AT&T DSL (1.5M/384k $40/mo+) and wireless (Up
>> to 30/15 $500+/month).
>> 
>> I’m not in some rural backwater or even some second-tier metro. I’m within
>> 10 miles of the former MAE West and also within 10 miles of Equinix SV1 (11
>> Great Oaks). There’s major fiber bundles within 2 miles of my house. I’m
>> near US101 and Capitol Expressway in San Jose.
>> 
>> The reason that things are this way, IMHO, is because we have allowed
>> “facilities based carriers” to leverage the monopoly on physical
>> infrastructure into a monopoly for services over that infrastructure.
>> 
>> The most viable solution, IMHO, is to require a separation between
>> physical infrastructure providers and those that provide services over that
>> infrastructure. Breaking the tight coupling between the two and requiring
>> physical infrastructure providers to lease facilities to operators on an
>> equal footing for all operators will reduce the barriers to competition in
>> the operator space. It will also make limited competition in the facilities
>> space possible, though unlikely.
>> 
>> This model exists to some extent in a few areas that have municipal
>> residential fiber services, and in most of those localities, it is working
>> well.
>> 
>> That’s one of the reasons that the incumbent facilities based carriers
>> have lobbied so hard to get laws in states where a city has done this that
>> prevent other cities from following suit.
>> 
>> Fortunately, one of the big gains in recent FCC rulings is that these laws
>> are likely to be rendered null and void.
>> 
>> Unfortunately, there is so much vested interest in the status quo that
>> achieving this sort of separation is unlikely without a really strong grass
>> roots movement. Sadly, the average sound-bite oriented citizen doesn’t know
>> (or want to learn) enough to facilitate such a grass-roots movement, so if
>> we want to build such a future, we have a long slog of public education and
>> recruitment ahead of us.
>> 
>> In the mean time, we’ll get to continue to watch companies like CC, VZ, TW
>> screw over their customers and the content providers their customers want
>> to reach for the sake of extorting extra money from both sides of the
>> transaction.
>> 
>> Owen
>> 
>>> On Aug 15, 2015, at 06:40 , Matthew Huff <mhuff at ox.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> It's only partially about net neutrality. Cogent provides cheap
>> bandwidth for content providers, and sends a lot of traffic to eyeball
>> networks. In the past, peering partners expected symmetrical load sharing.
>> Cogent feels that eyeball networks should be happy to carry their traffic
>> since the customers want their services, the eyeball networks want Cogent
>> to pay them extra. When there is congestion, neither side wants to upgrade
>> their peeing until this is resolved, so they haven't. This has been going
>> on for at least 5 years, and happens all over the cogent peering map.
>>> 
>>> Depending on what protocol you are using, it can be an issue or not. Our
>> end users on eyeball networks had difficulty maintaining VPN connections.
>> We had to drop our Cogent upstream and work with our remaining upstream
>> provides to traffic engineer around Cogent. YMMV.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> ----
>>> Matthew Huff | 1 Manhattanville Rd
>>> Director of Operations | Purchase, NY 10577
>>> OTA Management LLC | Phone: 914-460-4039
>>> aim: matthewbhuff | Fax: 914-694-5669
>>> 
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: NANOG [mailto:nanog-bounces at nanog.org] On Behalf Of Jordan
>> Hamilton
>>> Sent: Friday, August 14, 2015 5:31 PM
>>> To: nanog at nanog.org
>>> Subject: net neutrality peering dispute between CenturyTel/Qwest and
>> Cogent in Dallas
>>> 
>>> I have several customers that are having packet loss issues, the packet
>> loss appears to be associated with a Cogent router interface of
>> 38.104.86.222. My upstream provider is telling me that the packet loss is
>> being caused by a net neutrality peering dispute between CenturyTel/Quest
>> and Cogent in Dallas. I did some quick googling to see if I could come up
>> with any articles or something like that I could provide to my customers
>> and did not see anything. Anyone know any details?
>>> 
>>> Thanks
>>> 
>>> Jordan Hamilton
>>> Senior Telecommunications Engineer
>>> 
>>> Empire District Electric Co.
>>> 720 Schifferdecker
>>> PO Box 127
>>> Joplin, MO 64802
>>> 
>>> Ph: 417-625-4223
>>> Cell: 417-388-3351
>>> 
>>> 
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