The IPv6 Travesty that is Cogent's refusal to peer Hurricane Electric - and how to solve it

Matthew D. Hardeman mhardeman at ipifony.com
Thu Jan 21 19:02:38 UTC 2016


I hear you.

Taken to extremes, I can see how the argument sounds like that.

However…  I have some thoughts on what you’ve said.

Most of us would never get peerings to all the Tier 1s.

But…

Hurricane Electric already has IPv6 peering to every network that matters, save for Cogent’s.  Every other accepted Tier 1 peers with HE on IPv6.  Even SPRINT.  If we got back historically, they (Sprint) were among the most coveted and hardest to get IP peerings.  Even they recognized HE’s dominance of the IPv6 space early on.

I’m not bashing Cogent.  I’m a customer of theirs and they’ve generally served me well.  The trouble I have in accepting Cogent’s behavior in this matter is that it just seems irrational.  If a typical, public forum peering dispute arose between HE & Cogent regarding IPv6, frankly and pretty objectively, you’d expect it to be Hurricane Electric questioning the value of peering Cogent IPv6 rather than Cogent questioning HE.

I don’t question these parties’ rights not to peer, but I do question the logic behind it.  I think Cogent is hurting themselves on this more than HE is getting hurt by it.


> On Jan 21, 2016, at 12:52 PM, Brandon Butterworth <brandon at rd.bbc.co.uk> wrote:
> 
>>> On Jan 21, 2016, at 1:07 PM, Matthew D. Hardeman <mhardeman at ipifony.com> wrote:
>>> Since Cogent is clearly the bad actor here (the burden being
>>> Cogent's to prove otherwise because HE is publicly on record as saying
>>> that theyd love to peer with Cogent)
> 
> I'd like to peer with all tier 1's, they are thus all bad as
> they won't.
> 
> HE decided they want to be transit free for v6 and set out on
> a campaign of providing free tunnels/transit/peering to establish
> this. Cogent, for all their faults, are free to not accept the
> offer.
> 
> Can the Cogent bashing stop now, save it for when they do something
> properly bad.
> 
> brandon




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