ISP Dispute Causing Connectivity Issues for Customers

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "A peering dispute between Telia and Cogent is causing routing and connectivity problems for many internet users. Cogent shut down their connections to Telia over what they described as a 'contract dispute' over the size and location of their peering points. Telia attempted to route around the problem, but Cogent blocked that, too. This has caused a lot of trouble for sites which are not multi-homed. Groklaw, for example, is on a Cogent network (MCNC.demarc.cogentco.com), so any Europeans connecting via Telia can't get through."

Re:How much for only half an Internet?

[Spazmania]

After the Cogent/Level 3 spat a few years ago, smarter network engineers realized it wasn't safe to use either Cogent or Level 3 as their sole Internet provider. Second provider? Sure. But not sole.

After this Cogent/Telia spat, no one with a brain will pick Cogent as their sole Internet provider.

This won't hurt Cogent too deeply. They charge so little for bandwidth that it's hard to resist picking them as your #2.

Yep

[iminplaya]

Quite a house of cards our fragile infrastructure has become. Somebody says "bomb" in San Francisco, and your flight from Mobile to Nashville will be grounded. A disagreement over the price causes droughts and blackouts in California. And our super robust internet can cut off whole countries with the snip of a cable or a flip of a switch. That's no way to run a circus, I say.

This message was brought to you by... BIGCO...where the nose meets the grindstone.

Re:Yep

[morbiuswilters]

"Super robust Internet"? Good God, you must be one of those people who think the Internet was originally designed by the military to survive a nuclear attack. The Internet has always been fragile and highly dependent on centralized routing. It's a shame these two companies can't work together, but there are plenty of providers who have more respect for their customers. This isn't a conspiracy to undermine your rights, it's the inability of two for-profit businesses to act in the best interests of the customers who pay their bills. It sucks but it happens and we move on.

Re:Internet is vital now...

[morbiuswilters]

Um, the Internet is surely important, but I wouldn't suggest it is more critical to survival than roads or food, both of which seem to be handled quite fine by private enterprise. And I take it you have never been involved in a traffic jam, because this kind of crap happens all the time in the real world. Yeah, it bites, but there are plenty of businesses who may hundreds of thousands a month of connectivity that will not be amused by this. I expect repercussions for the involved ISPs. The "answer" to me is to realize that sometimes people or organizations get into stupid disputes and it inconveniences people, but that people will find a way to work around it. This cannot turn out well for Cogent or Telia.

Re:This doesn't seem too crazy to me...

[QuantumRiff]

You know, thats not true. In my area, I can choose Qwest DSL, charter cable, Clear-wire, small ISP's, etc. Every single one of them uses Qwest's fibers out of town. If Qwest gets into a spat with somebody, I can't access the internet, regardless of which ISP I am using locally. Keep in mind, I sit in a town that is on a main fiber route for williams, level 3, and a few others along the west coast, but none of them will sell any access locally. (were apparently too small of fish, which is a shame, williams cable has a set of buildings holding equipment about 100yards from where I am now sitting)

Tell it like it is: whoever's wrong, get over it

[postbigbang]

It's like an old telecom SS7 spat. Tell them to get over it. In three more days, we pull all our servers from and move on. Can't get to what we need? As ISPs, they have precious little time to figure it out, then we split. Go ahead, try and enforce that five-9's contract. Providers are everywhere, drooling for business. Bye-bye, blackout. Hello loneliness.

Re:Internet is vital now...

[ScrewMaster]

Um, the Internet is surely important, but I wouldn't suggest it is more critical to survival than roads or food

I would, because the organizations which provide us with food and other necessities are dependent upon the Internet. I doubt the average interstate trucking company would have any idea how to operate without the Internet and GPS. The entire supply chain is utterly dependent upon modern communications, from production to delivery. The tech just makes everything so damned efficient that we've largely forgotten how to get along without it. I think we're starting to see how dangerous that can be, given the caliber of the folks running said communications.

In any event, the way to handle the likes of AT&T/SBC, Comcast and the rest is very simple: it's called standards. That worked very well for the phone system for a hundred years: AT&T (the old AT&T) built out the most reliable communications system on the planet, but that's because they were a heavily-regulated monopoly which had enforced quality-of-service standards. Comcast and the rest can provide almost no service at all for what we pay them and they get away with it.

Unfortunately, the government itself is so corrupt that it's unlikely Congress would ever be able to implement any kind of ISP regulation that has teeth to it, much less enforce it. Hell, they fucking gave away some hundreds of billions of dollars to these assholes, and never bothered to ask for an accounting of where the hell it went.

Re:How much for only half an Internet?

[Detritus]

The TOS won't always get them off the hook. Claims made in ads can be considered part of the contract, even if they are disavowed in the TOS.

Re:How much for only half an Internet?

[Anonymous Coward]

Its about the journey, not the destination.

Re:Yep

[Anonymous Coward]

Furthermore, you'll notice that these faults are not caused by the computer scientists or engineers, but rather by the businessmen and management.

Re:Internet is vital now...

[glitch23]

I would, because the organizations which provide us with food and other necessities are dependent upon the Internet. I doubt the average interstate trucking company would have any idea how to operate without the Internet and GPS.

You say that like those companies didn't exist prior to the Internet and GPS capability. They have existed for decades and did just fine. They are only more efficient now, as you said, with the technology available. If it went away they would just have to adjust by going back to the way they did business in the past. They wouldn't like it but they would survive because every other company would have to do the same so it wouldn't be like one company would go back to being less efficient than another. They would still be on equal footing as far as costs are concerned. If anything, the smaller companies who may not be able to afford some of the technology that the bigger companies can afford would have a better chance of survival.

Re:Internet is vital now...

[glitch23]

*cough*retard*cough* I guess all the people who starve while the trucking companies that ship food to the grocery stores in the cities adjust back to paper are just a little business hiccup.

People did not die just because old fashioned paper/pencil was used. Companies were not incompetent just because they had to do things without computers. They are incompetent for other reasons. If you are going to sling names you should so with your real username too; it might just make your high school name calling a little more credible.

Re:That's what happens...

[jcdill]

This isn't about "money obsessed CEOs arguing". This is about major networks peering and exchanging data that their respective customers pay both networks to carry, send, and receive.

Cogent primarily hosts content, Telia primarily has eyeballs (ISP customers, end users). Both have customers who pay them for their respective internet services and access. Telia's customers expect Telia to deliver the content they request and pay for (the content hosted on Cogent servers, and other servers worldwide on the internet). Telia wants Cogent to pay Telia for the privilege of exchanging data - for Telia's customer's requests to travel from Telia's network to Cogent's network, and for the content those customer's requested to travel back from Cogent's network onto Telia's network.

This is not the first time another major network has tried this trick with Cogent. This happened between Level3 and Cogent [google.com], and Level3 had to back down.

jc

Re:Internet is vital now...

[Dan541]

I don't think you understand what your talking about.

That was THEN this is NOW.

There is a big difference, the systems we use now would not cope without the Internet because it is now an integral part of the system, you cannot simply flick a switch and change the way companies operate.

Change takes time!

~Dan