ISP Dispute Causing Connectivity Issues for Customers 192
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."
This doesn't seem too crazy to me... (Score:4, Interesting)
Internet is vital now... (Score:5, Interesting)
That is no longer the case. The Internet has grown to become a vital infrastructure. Just about every business relies on the Internet to get their work done. It is an indispensable tool for students and academics. It has risen nearly to the status of roads or electrical power in terms of being depended upon by billions of people.
What's my point? My point is that with respect to most utilities (roads, water, electricity, phone) we wouldn't tolerate much interruption in service... and we certainly wouldn't accept companies squabbling as a decent excuse for degrading the infrastructure. Can you imagine driving to work one day and finding roads blocked because of a contract dispute?
I'm not sure what the answer is. Turning the Internet into a government utility has its own problems. Similarly, laws which require certain norms for the utility may be over-reaching or impotent. But, ultimately, we need to push for this critical infrastructure to no longer be treated as a best-effort hobby/entertainment service. We need companies (and possibly legislators?) to acknowledge that the Internet is critical, and that this means that uptime/bandwidth/QoS must be maintained at a high-level.
Re:How much for only half an Internet? (Score:5, Interesting)
What really has me concerned is that Cogent is choosing to punish Telia beyond simply shutting down the peering points. They've blocked all traffic that originates from Telia's network even if it comes through a third network. Doesn't that violate their peering agreements with the third networks? And isn't it dangerously like censorship? Perhaps someone should ask the FCC.
Re:Yep (Score:4, Interesting)
Also affects WoW players... (Score:4, Interesting)
This is listed in-game in WoW currently at the login screen.
Re:How much for only half an Internet? (Score:3, Interesting)
Third Parties (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Yep (Score:3, Interesting)
It seems that according to the summary and the article, that there aren't plenty of providers to take up the slack. We're guessing it's because Cogent eventually slammed the door shut on these alternate paths to their network from Telia, since none of Cogent's customers accessed Telia via alternate routes during this time. We shouldn't permit this to happen.
Re:Internet is vital now... (Score:5, Interesting)
Why, yes I can — the government-owned New York subway was gripped by just such a problem [wikipedia.org] recently (in 2005). Millions of people were affected — getting to work was a nightmare...
In more Socialist countries (such as France) subway and other vital infrastructure is routinely shut down due to strikes (which are contract disputes between workers and employer). I was actually hit by such a strike myself — on that one week I was in Paris — and had to walk through the streets smelling of rotting garbage, because garbage collectors were on strike too — no kidding...
If people don't want to do their job for some reason, there is no way to force them. It was already illegal for New York transit to strike, but they did it anyway. For another example, when the policemen feel, they aren't treated nicely, they strike too. Although it is illegal for them to strike (obviously), you can not stop them from calling in sick (the special term is "Blue Flu [wikipedia.org]"). For yet another example, flight controllers can't strike either, yet they had to make Reagan famous by striking — and disabling an even more important part of the country's (world's!) infrastructure...
These things will happen...
Re:How much for only half an Internet? (Score:3, Interesting)
Min
Also affects email traffic in the US & Europe (Score:5, Interesting)
Since Cogent actively drops any traffic that's been even just in transit anywhere on the pretty big TeliaSonera International Carrier network [teliasoneraic.com] (it's a tier 1 net that covers all of the US and Europe), your email messages will just be held at some random backup email server for a couple of days until you'll get a return notice saying your message hasn't been delivered yet. If you're lucky that is.
For any important/urgent emails, you now need to make a follow-up phone call, just to see if the message was delivered. (Yes, you could request a receipt when the message is opened, but it's optional for the receiver to send the receipt and many don't).
I hope that ibiblio & the internet archive (archive.org) are moved away from their current hosting on Cogent's network, urgently.
Great timing to send urgent business email, normally delivered within seconds, only to find out that it has never been received. I do wonder if this active sabotage of 3rd party Internet traffic might be class-actionable. Of course e-mail is just a tiny part of the overall losses that 3rd parties suffer from this.
Re:Internet is vital now... (Score:4, Interesting)
Here in the UK we even have a special car park for when the French port workers strike:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Stack [wikipedia.org]
Operation Stack is the codename used by Kent Police and the Port of Dover in England to refer to the method of using sections of the M20 motorway in Kent to park lorries when the English Channel or Dover ports are blocked by bad weather or industrial action. It has been implemented over 75 times since its inception 20 years ago.
The need for BAPPs (Big-Ass Peering Pipes) (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Route around? (Score:4, Interesting)
Cogent is breaking things by announcing a prefix and then blocking traffic to it (in AS81's case) if it comes from an AS they don't like. Or, it may be that the downstream customers are just using default routes and blindly sending traffic for AS1299 which AS174 is just dropping.
However, if Cogent is sending a default to customers, they have an obligation to learn all prefixes available from any peer they have, no matter the originating AS.
Shame on Cogent. Play by the rules. You don't have to peer with Telia, but honor the peering agreements you have for other customers to transit to any peer that has a peering agreement to get to Telia.
Re:Internet is vital now... (Score:3, Interesting)
"Comcast and the rest can provide almost no service at all for what we pay them and they get away with it."
Note, "what we pay them." We pay them prices based on competitive forces, where reliability is just one factor. Granted, Comcast may not be the best example. But think in general.
The way the phone network got so reliable was because we granted a monopoly, and granted guaranteed, predictable profits. If it cost X to get the standards required, fine -- it was paid for, and there were *always* profits on top. That is key. We cannot have our cake and eat it too. Fast, good, cheap. We all know it. Look at the power companies. We have politicians pushing populist agendas to freeze rates, limit profits -- and the result is that the private companies running the power grid simply cut back elsewhere, and we have power outages and very little new power generation (of course that is also to be blamed on NIMBY opponents).
Perhaps we should have some more oversight of the Internet today, some sort of oversight board. But even if we did have that, would it or could it prevent the peering spats? Should it? What would a review board do in the case of an American company and European company with a contract that wasn't being honored? Would we need some sort of United Nations entity? How would this impact innovation and interest if decisions had to be brought before regulatory entities, subject to public comment, so on. If companies simply cannot depeer and make it actually hurt (what Cogent did by blocking traffic), then where do the incentives come from to provide the peering agreed upon? If we regulate it and mandate reliability, will we also regulate and mandate paying the true cost, along with a healthy enough profit to make sure a private entity remains interested in maintaining the network and providing for future growth and capacity? What will lack of competition do to cost, and market penetration? Will regulation drive away the private investors who fund these companies in hope of turning a healthy profit? Will we all pay for it via higher service fees or taxes? Is it perhaps ok to have these occasional spats, if the end result is a reasonably robust network at the "best" price? Or should the whole thing just be one big government funded and controlled system paid for by taxes and usage fees? Do we trust the government? Where would the innovation come from?
Perhaps what we have is the best of many imperfect possibilities?
Larry
Re:Also affects WoW players... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:How much for only half an Internet? (Score:2, Interesting)
We're a pretty large IT cooperation between colleges and business colleges in denmark, and this bit of fun has just meant that around 20% of our users can't reach our servers over the internet.
And what awfull timing, almost ruining easter holidays. Lot's of overtime setting up a new internet connection parallel with the one we've already got and the internal routing hell that then ensues when you're not multi homed.
Well. We've learned our lesson and are taking steps to become multi homed as quickly as we possibly can. I don't know if we'll consider Cogent as a partner in the future. They may be cheap but this kind of idiocy is hardly confidence inspiring.