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

Thu Jan 28 09:16:34 UTC 2016

> While I do not disagree that larger providers looking to protect their
> revenues is an economically-sound objective, I think the typical peering
> policies of old do not entirely hold up in 2016.

I’m pretty convinced that they never really did. I realize they’ve been popular
conventional wisdom for some time now, but that was brought about when Telcos
started being the dominant players in the ISP market and I always regarded it
as an artifact of “carrier mentality” where they were so used to the settlement
mechanisms of the traditional telephone network.

The reality is that the traditional telephone network has been getting slowly
superseded by the internet largely because of the differences in the settlement
model. If TDM and its settlement model were cheaper than VOIP, there would be
little reason to spend money deploying VOIP. Unified communications has some
benefits, but not really enough in most real world implementations to overcome
the costs if it wasn’t reducing the corporate phone-spend.

For many years, telcos tried all kinds of strange things and in some remote
regions these are still happening. For example in some places, they sought
regulatory protection of their “right to revenue” for voice calls by actually
getting laws against VOIP services and the like. Those laws still exist in
some areas and their economies are suffering for it.

Bottom line, I’ve never seen a case where any ISP has definitively benefited
from a restrictive peering policy. At best, it’s a neutral factor that most
people just sort of accept. Routinely, it drives business away from such
ISPs towards Tier-2s with good transit relationships and a better peering
policy. At worst, I’ve seen it create active bad will in various communities
as is the current case with Cogent and is a demonstrable factor in the
decline of SPRINT.

Owen