I think the "depeering" probably shouldn't have happened, and should not have affected people that weren't involved in the dispute, i.e. the rest of us. Had this happened with any other utility, there would be investigations.
Good! Everytime they do this, businesses are affected, on the backend if nothing else. It screws up B2B and EDI xactions like mad. If companies can prove that it affected their bottom line, what recourse do they have???
Not only are businesses affected, but educational institutions are as well. At my workplace, we conduct many internet-based courses that completely *halted* when Level3 depeered Cogent. The professors of those courses had to quickly make major changes to their deadlines and course structure, to work around the outtage. That is the first time such actions have ever had to be taken here (including changes made due to hurricanes).
Doesn't this indicate a problem with the net's underlying design? I was always under the impression that if one peering went offline, even at tier 1, the traffic would simply redirect through any available route (As soon as the routers update).
Correct me if I'm wrong here, but unless Level 3 and Cogent are the only two tier-1 entities in a network there should be a non-direct route between them, even if it involves going through other peers?
Its sort of the big issue with our infrastructure now. The companies are too big to provide that kind of security because of politics involved but if they were smaller then they wouldn't have the capital to make the infrastructure what it is.
I'd say they made their point with the depeering. One disruption now is better than the company going under later.
Still, it is scary that one event can have such an impact.
After hearing hundreds of posts clamoring for government regulation (ie, slow to respond expensive monopoly), the best solution came quickly.
Why did this agreement happen? It happened because the market required it. Customers were unhappy, producers lost money, no one profited on either side.
If we pushed for regulation, how many years and billions of dollars would replace what two corporations did in a week or two on the demands of their customers?
When was the last time you remember that Sprint customers were cut off from being able to call MCI subscribers?
I don't want massive regulation, but something simple to prevent deliberate cut-offs would be nice, and it appears that the free market didn't solve that problem.
I use neither Level3 nor Cogent. I use an ISP with a multitude of backbone connections. That's provided by competition which isn't hampered by expensive regulation or licensing.
As for Sprint and MCI, I've had 5 occasions where my LD provider lost connectivity. I've been using risky 1c/minute phone cards for years and the companies often go belly up, with their 800 #'s pointing to nowhere.
Don't harm my choices because you use a bad provider.
Disclaimer: I'm not a "freemarketsrulefreemarketsrulefreemarketsrule" neocon freak, and I'm not defending the GPs argument *at all*. But your analogy sucks because the size comparisons are wrong. If L(3) == Sprint, Cogent == MacleodUSA, not Cogent == MCI.
Using Sprint & MacleodUSA as an example, they are not required by regulation to exchange minutes of use or maintain any business relationship unless some they have a negotiated a contract. And they may terminate any such agreement, to either one's adva
I don't want massive regulation, but something simple to prevent deliberate cut-offs would be nice, and it appears that the free market didn't solve that problem.
So you are all for the free market except when the free market comes to a conclusion that you disagree with? Is that what you are saying? The free market has solved this problem it just took a little bit of time to converge on the answer.
I don't want massive regulation, but something simple to prevent deliberate cut-offs would be nice, and it appears that the free market didn't solve that problem.
Capitalism is a self correcting system by itself, it is just not instantanious.
Regulations are not self correcting, and require that people who are being paid under the table by corporations, make the right choice and do what is right. If ABC, Inc. donates enough to congressmen, they get the better end of the regulation stick.
Capitalism is a self correcting system by itself, it is just not instantanious.
True... However this is very dangerous when it leads to public suffering.
Take the Great Depression in the 1930's. This of course was because of "total free market" situation without very little government intervention that just went "boom".
Technically, the failure of free market capitalism in the States lead to Fascism in Europe. (Yeah there are a gazillion other reasons it happened, but without the depressions and the economic f
This of course was because of "total free market" situation
It was because a great number of speculators had bought stocks on margin, and once the fall began, it rippled down quickly because no one could make their margin calls. 10% margins on many stocks.
I am not against ALL regulations, but there is a broad difference in the Great Depression, and customers going a few days without internet access, which no one had 10 years ago anyway.
If there was a "Great Internet Crash" or something, then I would be mor
DNS and routing really have very little to do with each other. Most websites of any size whatsoever not only have multiple IP addresses assigned to the site (DNS), but also multiple links to the internet across carriers (routing). A problem in either area can cause diruption to clients, but that doesn't make them the same system.
The link you provided (minus the marketing noise) sounds like a proximity based DNS solution...also not revolutionary. Many site-to-site load balancing solutions use response time
Give a man a fish, he eats for a day. Teach him to fish and he eats for the rest of his life.
If a government agency just enforced some prior restraint on the companies, what have they learned? Not to do what they did. What have they learned by being forced to solve their problem themselves? Not to do what they did, and also how to successfully negotiate with each other when things go awry, what the market really wants from each firm, how to rapidly re-evaluate corporate strategy in the face of adverse external events -- in short, how to be more "grown-up" in managing their own affairs.
In the new agreement, there are clauses that state that Level3 can again try to charge Cogent if their traffic amount is grossly over that of Level3's. So, while this is definitely an improvement, it doesn't rid all potential future problems.
If anything, this definitely hammers home the idea of multihoming...
In the new agreement, there are clauses that state that Level3 can again try to charge Cogent if their traffic amount is grossly over that of Level3's. So, while this is definitely an improvement, it doesn't rid all potential future problems.
Though you have to wonder how they determine whose traffic is bigger. Surely, if a level3 customer is downloading from a cogent customer, the reverse is also true. If a connection is cut off, there will 2 unsatisfied customers, one on each end of the connection.
In the new agreement, there are clauses that state that Level3 can again try to charge Cogent if their traffic amount is grossly over that of Level3's.
How do you know that? Have you just broken your NDA?
The press release says:
Under the terms of the agreement, the companies have agreed to the settlement-free exchange of traffic subject to specific payments if certain obligations are not met.
You're right about the multihoming at least. Only a fool isn't multihomed.
Is it just me, or does Level 3's ultimatum sound alot like an old fashioned protection racket? How is this any different from the Don sending someone to smash up someone's shop after the owner misses a payment?
Is there any way to get law enforcement involved? What about a class action lawsuit?
Sorry, but that's plainly ignorant. There's no "static routes" on Level3 that send traffic to Cogent. The way peering works is that Cogent announces their routes to Level3 (and UUNet, and Sprint etc.) using the BGP routing protocol at interconnections in their network. UUNet does the same for their routes, Sprint for theirs, and so on. The big boys do NOT announce each others' routes to each others peers, only those routes that they originate or that their downstream customers own. If all of those connectio
Tier 1 peering needs to be regulated in certain situations. The Cogent and Level 3 "who has the bigger dick" contest has caused isolated pockets where full routes/reachability to certain parts of the Internet wasn't available for some Cogent and L3 downstream customers. Get these big boys to maintain settlement free peering when a certain amount of the routing table "belongs" to them. simple.
Tier 1 peering needs to be regulated in certain situations.
I'm for some regulation of the Internet, but not here. These guys went back to the table because they each had guns to their heads; their customers (on both sides) didn't really care whose fault it was and would've started leaving.
Calling for regulation would likely lead to California energy crisis-type situations: PG&E and Con Ed were both required to retail (at a fixed price) stuff they had to buy wholesale (on the open market) and when the wholesale price went above retail, bankruptcy. (Don't get into market manipulation, that's a peripheral issue). The Internet has been remarkably successful precisely because any yahoo with a router and a cable crimper could build out more of it, without a license, approvals or anything else.
Right, take the big decisions on networking away from IT CEOs who, whatever their faults of arrogance, need customers if they want their pensions to be secure, and who have stablesful of actual experienced engineers working for them, and instead give control to a bunch of Washington 9-4 lawyers who majored in Government because algebra was hard. The problem with wishing abstractly for regulation is that it overlooks the profound difficulty of finding competent regulators who are not already in the business.
You're missing the point. Cogent isn't a Tier 1 ISP. They're close, but not quite. To be a Tier 1, that means you don't pay for peering -- period. Cogent does.
This was a fairly straightforward business problem. Settlement-free peering only occurs when its in the best interests of both parties to do so. There are massive costs still incurred on each end, but they simply don't exchange money. The traffic in both directions is equal enough that neither side is incurring a loss. L3 determined that they were, and announced to Cogent that their settlement-free peering agreement was going to end.
Rather than doing what they should have done, and either ponied up the cash to L3, or reached a transit agreement with another ISP (say, a tier 2) to receive L3's prefixes and get its own prefixes onto L3's network, Cogent allowed the depeering to occur and used the resulting disruption to the Internet to their own advantage by calling L3 out.
They, in effect, allowed a major outage to occur in order to avoid paying for transit to L3. L3 gave them something like 90 days notice, plenty of time for Cogent to develop a contingency plan.
Yet, they didn't. Thier customers immediately became unreachable from L3's network, and their customers were unable to reach L3. They allowed this situation to continue, leveraging it for a public relations backlash against L3, and attempted to lure L3 customers to Cogent.
I'll be the first to admit my understanding of the issue is not 100% -- so if I'm missing a critical point, please let me know. But, from my understanding, let me be the first to say this is not a major problem with the Internet, nor is it something that regulation would do anything to fix. This is a bullshit back-room business decision by an ISP trying to save a buck and make a name for itself.
A simple approach but obviously not the status quo method of deciding on who should pay for what.. L3 customers are requesting more traffic from Cogents customers then is going the other way. Why is any one direction of traffic considered a load and another considered a source for income and different from each other? It seems to me as these two companies are concerned, more L3 customers desire and need Cogent traffic then Cogent people that need the L3 traffic as noted by the obvious business difference t
Level-3 and Cogent are not all that differnet in size. They both cover the US from coast to coast. They both go to Europe. Level-3 goes to Hawaii, but that is the only real footprint difference. Cogent has fewer US POPs, but still hits all four corners. Cogent claims 80G backbones. Level-3 claims 110G backbones. Both networks have real 24x7 operations centers and skilled operators.
You cannot deny that there is a differnce in size between the two companies, but it is pretty easy to describe both as "Tie
(with-cluehammer "You don't get it. Tier 1s have lots of peering agreements. A peering agreement with someone else DOESN'T entitle you to use their network to get to a third -- that would be transit. Basically, these guys said they wouldn't exchange traffic directly for free, and they wouldn't pay some other provider to act as a go-between, which, if you understand how these things work (reputation, game theory and all that) is perfectly logical.")
I do get it. The reason why this debacle was so visible is that Cogent only had (or still has) one (1) peering agreement, and that was with Level 3. If they had more, as you claim all tier 1's do, then they could have routed over other peer(s).
Nope. Routing over one network to get to another is called *transit*. Cogent refused to pay for transit to get to L3. So they still had plenty of peering arangements with other networks, but none of those peering arangements allowed Cogent to reach L3. (And the same could be said in reverse.)
Oct. 7: We determined that the agreement that we had with Cogent was not
equitable to Level 3. [...] Cogent was sending
far more traffic to the Level 3 network than Level 3 was sending to Cogent's
network.
Oct. 28: The modified peering arrangement allows for the continued exchange of traffic
between the two companies' networks, and includes commitments from each party
with respect to the characteristics and volume of traffic to be exchanged.
Under the terms of the agreement, the companies have agreed to the
settlement-free [i.e. no-charge -- ed.] exchange of traffic subject to specific payments if certain
obligations are not met.
So what happened? It's unlikely Cogent could say "Oh yeah, we'll get 50% more retail customers so as to send traffic your way." Level 3's customers squawked and Cogent insisted they wouldn't pay? (That's Internet Mutually Assured Destruction)
the exact details of what was agreed to will probablly never be public one possible condition could be moving some of the peering to other locations so level3 has to do less work and cognet has to do more to get the traffic between the desired endpoints. I belive depeerings have caused changes like that in the past.
another possiblity is the peering is theoretically setlement free but cognet may end up paying some of the "fines" mentioned.
yet another possibility is as you suggest level 3's customers said enou
I assume that the phone companies and mobile companies have similar (though not identical) issues to this. Aren't they mandated to provide access to their networks to other providers (e.g., Vonage)? What restrictions/costs are typically involved?
I am a sys admin for a small atlanta ga ISP, when Level3 de-peered you dialup users that were connecting to Level3 POPs couldnt connect, our call center was flooded and we were scrambling like mad to switch everone over to the Aligence Telcom POPs. L3 really needs to think about the broader ramifications of their actions. Also, The internet is suposed to be dynamicaly routed, ya know BGP3 and so on. Why did this break so many things? If the route was down, shouldnt the routers just use the next best preffere
The core of the Internet is not run like you think it would be. While BGP is dynamic, when and where various prefixes (network address blocks) are advertised is tightly controlled. When you peer with an ISP, that means you only exchange their prefixes for yours. Any other networks that may be reachable via that ISP are not advertised back to you, just like they don't send your prefixes to the rest of the Internet.
Access to other parts of the Internet via an ISP is called transit -- this is what we're all m
Level 3 didn't just switch its connection to Cogent off, it left it running and tarpitted any traffic going through it. Like other people are saying, there'd be a class action against them if, say, they were a power company deliberately sending surges into other companies' grids.
Dudes, there's a lot of cluelessness here, about tarpitting, routing around failure, next best route etcetera.
Being a tier 1 means, essentially, HAVING NO DEFAULT ROUTES. You make deals with all the other tier 1 providers for direct connections at various places around the country and, if you can't colocate with a particular tier 1 in a particular geographic location, you pay another provider for transit from you to that tier 1. Being at the top of the pyramid, there's no default route you can hand packets off to when one of your connections fails - because that would mean somebody else was providing you with a free lunch.
Of course, these guys are constantly squabbling ("we're bigger than you, so you should be paying us for the privilege") but, since disconnecting affects both peers' customers, it's really cutting off your nose to spite your face.
Do you even have any idea what it is you're discussing here? This is two companies who had a business agreement, one company abused it and got smacked by the other company. Think this is about the US? Why don't you look into France Telecom's de-peering of Cogent awhile back.
This is not an Internet thing in that it affects the entire Internet. It is an internetworking thing in that it affects the way two ISPs exchange data.
Sit your knee-jerk, loud-mouthed, over-opinionated, under-educated ass down and shutup
Oops - I guess I could have phrased that a little more clearly. The November 9th ultimatum came when Level 3 originally restored peering back on 10/07. Today's agreement supercedes that, so the danger of another depeering (between these two ISPs) has passed unless somebody (read: Cogent) violates the terms of the new agreement.
How was this allowed to happen? (Score:4, Insightful)
Internet Latency (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Internet Latency (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Internet Latency (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Internet Latency (Score:2)
Correct me if I'm wrong here, but unless Level 3 and Cogent are the only two tier-1 entities in a network there should be a non-direct route between them, even if it involves going through other peers?
Re:Internet Latency (Score:2)
I'd say they made their point with the depeering. One disruption now is better than the company going under later.
Still, it is scary that one event can have such an impact.Re:Internet Latency (Score:2)
To keep this on topic: maybe they can poop on the Internet?
Re:Internet Latency (Score:2)
Your friend is very funny, though. Incredible.
Free market solution regulation (Score:4, Insightful)
Why did this agreement happen? It happened because the market required it. Customers were unhappy, producers lost money, no one profited on either side.
If we pushed for regulation, how many years and billions of dollars would replace what two corporations did in a week or two on the demands of their customers?
Re:Free market solution regulation (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't want massive regulation, but something simple to prevent deliberate cut-offs would be nice, and it appears that the free market didn't solve that problem.
Parent
Re:Free market solution regulation (Score:2, Troll)
As for Sprint and MCI, I've had 5 occasions where my LD provider lost connectivity. I've been using risky 1c/minute phone cards for years and the companies often go belly up, with their 800 #'s pointing to nowhere.
Don't harm my choices because you use a bad provider.
Re:Free market solution regulation (Score:2)
But your analogy sucks because the size comparisons are wrong. If L(3) == Sprint, Cogent == MacleodUSA, not Cogent == MCI.
Using Sprint & MacleodUSA as an example, they are not required by regulation to exchange minutes of use or maintain any business relationship unless some they have a negotiated a contract. And they may terminate any such agreement, to either one's adva
Re:Free market solution regulation (Score:2)
So you are all for the free market except when the free market comes to a conclusion that you disagree with? Is that what you are saying? The free market has solved this problem it just took a little bit of time to converge on the answer.
Re:Free market solution regulation (Score:2)
Capitalism is a self correcting system by itself, it is just not instantanious.
Regulations are not self correcting, and require that people who are being paid under the table by corporations, make the right choice and do what is right. If ABC, Inc. donates enough to congressmen, they get the better end of the regulation stick.
True Capitalism is si
Re:Free market solution regulation (Score:2)
True... However this is very dangerous when it leads to public suffering.
Take the Great Depression in the 1930's. This of course was because of "total free market" situation without very little government intervention that just went "boom".
Technically, the failure of free market capitalism in the States lead to Fascism in Europe. (Yeah there are a gazillion other reasons it happened, but without the depressions and the economic f
Re:Free market solution regulation (Score:2)
It was because a great number of speculators had bought stocks on margin, and once the fall began, it rippled down quickly because no one could make their margin calls. 10% margins on many stocks.
I am not against ALL regulations, but there is a broad difference in the Great Depression, and customers going a few days without internet access, which no one had 10 years ago anyway.
If there was a "Great Internet Crash" or something, then I would be mor
Re:Free market solution regulation (Score:2)
Care to explain what DNS has to do with a layer 3 peering arrangement?
Oh...that's right...nothing at all.
Re:Free market solution regulation (Score:2)
Re:Free market solution regulation (Score:3, Informative)
Most websites of any size whatsoever not only have multiple IP addresses assigned to the site (DNS), but also multiple links to the internet across carriers (routing). A problem in either area can cause diruption to clients, but that doesn't make them the same system.
The link you provided (minus the marketing noise) sounds like a proximity based DNS solution...also not revolutionary. Many site-to-site load balancing solutions use response time
consider an aphorism (Score:4, Insightful)
If a government agency just enforced some prior restraint on the companies, what have they learned? Not to do what they did. What have they learned by being forced to solve their problem themselves? Not to do what they did, and also how to successfully negotiate with each other when things go awry, what the market really wants from each firm, how to rapidly re-evaluate corporate strategy in the face of adverse external events -- in short, how to be more "grown-up" in managing their own affairs.
Parent
alas too often true (Score:2)
Stronger ties, but still breakable (Score:5, Informative)
If anything, this definitely hammers home the idea of multihoming...
Re:Stronger ties, but still breakable (Score:2)
In the new agreement, there are clauses that state that Level3 can again try to charge Cogent if their traffic amount is grossly over that of Level3's. So, while this is definitely an improvement, it doesn't rid all potential future problems.
Though you have to wonder how they determine whose traffic is bigger. Surely, if a level3 customer is downloading from a cogent customer, the reverse is also true. If a connection is cut off, there will 2 unsatisfied customers, one on each end of the connection.
Of cours
Re:Stronger ties, but still breakable (Score:2)
How do you know that? Have you just broken your NDA?
The press release says:
You're right about the multihoming at least. Only a fool isn't multihomed.
"Pay up or we disrupt your business..." (Score:3, Insightful)
Is there any way to get law enforcement involved? What about a class action lawsuit?
Re:"Pay up or we disrupt your business..." (Score:2)
Needs to be regulated (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Needs to be regulated (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm for some regulation of the Internet, but not here. These guys went back to the table because they each had guns to their heads; their customers (on both sides) didn't really care whose fault it was and would've started leaving.
Calling for regulation would likely lead to California energy crisis-type situations: PG&E and Con Ed were both required to retail (at a fixed price) stuff they had to buy wholesale (on the open market) and when the wholesale price went above retail, bankruptcy. (Don't get into market manipulation, that's a peripheral issue). The Internet has been remarkably successful precisely because any yahoo with a router and a cable crimper could build out more of it, without a license, approvals or anything else.
Parent
ugh (Score:2)
The problem with wishing abstractly for regulation is that it overlooks the profound difficulty of finding competent regulators who are not already in the business.
Re:ugh (Score:2)
Indeed I can. Poor bastards. Bud Light and no women, you say? Dante never wrote of this circle of Hell.
Re:Needs to be regulated (Score:5, Insightful)
This was a fairly straightforward business problem. Settlement-free peering only occurs when its in the best interests of both parties to do so. There are massive costs still incurred on each end, but they simply don't exchange money. The traffic in both directions is equal enough that neither side is incurring a loss. L3 determined that they were, and announced to Cogent that their settlement-free peering agreement was going to end.
Rather than doing what they should have done, and either ponied up the cash to L3, or reached a transit agreement with another ISP (say, a tier 2) to receive L3's prefixes and get its own prefixes onto L3's network, Cogent allowed the depeering to occur and used the resulting disruption to the Internet to their own advantage by calling L3 out.
They, in effect, allowed a major outage to occur in order to avoid paying for transit to L3. L3 gave them something like 90 days notice, plenty of time for Cogent to develop a contingency plan.
Yet, they didn't. Thier customers immediately became unreachable from L3's network, and their customers were unable to reach L3. They allowed this situation to continue, leveraging it for a public relations backlash against L3, and attempted to lure L3 customers to Cogent.
I'll be the first to admit my understanding of the issue is not 100% -- so if I'm missing a critical point, please let me know. But, from my understanding, let me be the first to say this is not a major problem with the Internet, nor is it something that regulation would do anything to fix. This is a bullshit back-room business decision by an ISP trying to save a buck and make a name for itself.
Parent
Re:Needs to be regulated (Score:2, Insightful)
L3 customers are requesting more traffic from Cogents customers then is going the other way. Why is any one direction of traffic considered a load and another considered a source for income and different from each other? It seems to me as these two companies are concerned, more L3 customers desire and need Cogent traffic then Cogent people that need the L3 traffic as noted by the obvious business difference t
Re:Needs to be regulated (Score:2)
Cogent has fewer US POPs, but still hits all four corners. Cogent claims 80G backbones. Level-3 claims 110G backbones. Both networks have real 24x7 operations centers and skilled operators.
You cannot deny that there is a differnce in size between the two companies, but it is pretty easy to describe both as "Tie
Cogent isn't without fault here (Score:3, Interesting)
Are they going to learn their lesson and strike peering agreements with more tier ones then just Level 3?
Re:Cogent isn't without fault here (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Cogent isn't without fault here (Score:2)
I do get it. The reason why this debacle was so visible is that Cogent only had (or still has) one (1) peering agreement, and that was with Level 3. If they had more, as you claim all tier 1's do, then they could have routed over other peer(s).
Re:Cogent isn't without fault here (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:Cogent isn't without fault here (Score:2)
The way peering works is:
1. Peers will propogate transit (paying) routes to everyone (other transit customers and all peers).
2. Peers will propogate routes learned from peers to transit customers.
d
3. Peers DO NOT propogate routes learned from any direct peer to OTHER direct peers.
It was _rule number three_ that prevented networks single-homed to Cogent to be unreachable from networks single-homed to L(3) and vice versa.
Th
The interesting bit (Score:3, Informative)
Oct. 28: The modified peering arrangement allows for the continued exchange of traffic between the two companies' networks, and includes commitments from each party with respect to the characteristics and volume of traffic to be exchanged. Under the terms of the agreement, the companies have agreed to the settlement-free [i.e. no-charge -- ed.] exchange of traffic subject to specific payments if certain obligations are not met.
So what happened? It's unlikely Cogent could say "Oh yeah, we'll get 50% more retail customers so as to send traffic your way." Level 3's customers squawked and Cogent insisted they wouldn't pay? (That's Internet Mutually Assured Destruction)
Re:The interesting bit (Score:3, Interesting)
one possible condition could be moving some of the peering to other locations so level3 has to do less work and cognet has to do more to get the traffic between the desired endpoints. I belive depeerings have caused changes like that in the past.
another possiblity is the peering is theoretically setlement free but cognet may end up paying some of the "fines" mentioned.
yet another possibility is as you suggest level 3's customers said enou
Pissing contest (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Pissing contest (Score:2, Funny)
--laz
How does the phone company handle this? (Score:3, Interesting)
Leve3 and us. Also why did it break stuff? (Score:2, Insightful)
Also, The internet is suposed to be dynamicaly routed, ya know BGP3 and so on. Why did this break so many things? If the route was down, shouldnt the routers just use the next best preffere
Re:Leve3 and us. Also why did it break stuff? (Score:3, Informative)
When you peer with an ISP, that means you only exchange their prefixes for yours. Any other networks that may be reachable via that ISP are not advertised back to you, just like they don't send your prefixes to the rest of the Internet.
Access to other parts of the Internet via an ISP is called transit -- this is what we're all m
It wasn't de-peering. (Score:2, Interesting)
STOP THE CLUELESSNES! (Score:4, Insightful)
Being a tier 1 means, essentially, HAVING NO DEFAULT ROUTES. You make deals with all the other tier 1 providers for direct connections at various places around the country and, if you can't colocate with a particular tier 1 in a particular geographic location, you pay another provider for transit from you to that tier 1. Being at the top of the pyramid, there's no default route you can hand packets off to when one of your connections fails - because that would mean somebody else was providing you with a free lunch.
Of course, these guys are constantly squabbling ("we're bigger than you, so you should be paying us for the privilege") but, since disconnecting affects both peers' customers, it's really cutting off your nose to spite your face.
Re:so basically ... (Score:2)
Re:so basically ... (Score:2, Informative)
Think this is about the US? Why don't you look into France Telecom's de-peering of Cogent awhile back.
This is not an Internet thing in that it affects the entire Internet. It is an internetworking thing in that it affects the way two ISPs exchange data.
Sit your knee-jerk, loud-mouthed, over-opinionated, under-educated ass down and shutup
Re:Hah (Score:3, Informative)