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Sprint Cuts Cogent Off the Internet
Posted by
timothy
on Fri Oct 31, 2008 12:05 AM
from the is-that-an-ectomy-or-an-otomy? dept.
from the is-that-an-ectomy-or-an-otomy? dept.
superbus1929 writes "I work as a security analyst at an internet security company. While troubleshooting an issue, we learned why our customer couldn't keep his site-to-site VPN going from any location that uses Sprint as its ISP: Sprint has decided not to route traffic to Cogent due to litigation. This has a chilling effect; already, this person I worked with cannot communicate between a few sites of his, and since Sprint is stopping the connections cold (my traceroutes showed as complete, and not as timing out), it means that there is no backup plan; anyone going to Cogent from a Sprint ISP is crap out of luck."
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Behind the Cogent-Sprint Depeering 325 comments
An anonymous reader brings an update to Sprint's depeering with Cogent, which we discussed a few days back — namely, Sprint's side of the story. According to them, no free peering contract had ever existed, Cogent refused to pay the bills to exchange traffic, and after a year Sprint gave Cogent 30 days notice of their intent to disconnect. During this 30-day period, when one or two connections (out of ten) per week were shut down, Cogent made no alternate arrangements to alleviate the impact on their customers — but they had a press release ready when Sprint snipped the final wire. It will be interesting to see how Cogent responds.
[+]
The Other Side of the Sprint Vs. Cogent Depeering 126 comments
Swoolley writes "A month back this community discussed the Sprint vs. Cogent depeering. Now a story I wrote for Forbes.com tells the inside story of the fight, based on the lawsuits the two companies filed against each other in Virginia state court. For once, thanks to those suits, the public gets to see the details of a confidential peering agreement between two of the Internet's largest autonomous systems, as well as the circumstances leading up to the depeering. (Which company is in the right? Read the facts and decide for yourself.) While some people have argued that the depeering is reason for more government regulation, the Forbes story makes the case that details of the recent Cogent vs. Sprint fight argue for exactly the opposite: keeping the Internet backbones free of government meddling."
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Ah... that explains it (Score:5, Interesting)
Heh, I was wondering why scoreboard showed they were having issues:
http://scoreboard.keynote.com/scoreboard/Main.aspx [keynote.com]
*sigh*
So it wasn't just an outage.
Oh, good. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Oh, good. (Score:5, Insightful)
except that wireless customers cant get to cogent either.
Parent
Re:Oh, good. (Score:5, Insightful)
so the excuse to not boycot sprint is that the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing? fuck that, i'm boycotting sprint as an entire company.
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Re:Oh, good. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Oh, good. (Score:5, Interesting)
Our company buys quite a bit of transit from Cogent, and Sprint's looking glass sites are showing a complete partition between the two. Also, Cogent has offered free 100Mbit connectivity to any on-net Sprint customers until the issue is resolved.
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So what is Sprint providing its customers? (Score:5, Insightful)
If I'm a Sprint customer - I'd be calling Sprint right now and ask
"What the hell am I buying from you every month? .... etc etc "
I thought I was buying a DIA circuit - as in Direct Internet Access - but apparently you don't exactly do that. That's a breach of contract - that's a violation of your SLA - I want out of my contract now
Am I nuts here? It's either the freaking internet or it isn't - WTF?
empty threats (Score:5, Funny)
I thought I was buying a DIA circuit - as in Direct Internet Access - but apparently you don't exactly do that. That's a breach of contract - that's a violation of your SLA - I want out of my contract now
Sprint's reply: "Okay *flip*. Call us when you realize that getting a T1/T3 takes weeks. By the way, we charge a $1000 installation fee."
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Re:So what is Sprint providing its customers? (Score:5, Interesting)
Funny how history repeats itself, especially in Sprint's case. In 1996, Sean Doran (SprintLink senior network architect) decided CIX-W peering was no longer cool and dropped peering, causing one hell of a black hole. From my recollection, it was the first instance where open routing was disabled due to political or commercial objectives, and unfortunately for Sprint, it came at a time where Bob Collett (then head of SprintLink) was trying to promote Sprint's openness and participation in the community. Bob overruled his engineer and routing was restored several days later.
Since that point, BGP black holes have continued, usually to the detriment of customers. BBN Planet, Exodus and numerous others played the game presuming that content was more important than eyeballs or vice versa. The fallacy in their model is that content without consumer is as useless as consumer without content. Until they establish that understanding, neither unbalanced provider will succeed.
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Re:So what is Sprint providing its customers? (Score:5, Insightful)
No, you are NUTS!
Customers have a reasonable expectation of what services they are buying. If there is fine print or bait and switch tactics involved, or blatant disregard for service contract terms, there is legal reason to sue. In the USA we have lemon laws for cars and the same intent applies to everything in commercial business under the general terms of the law. Blatant theft of funds under the guise of contractual terms does not count. It may take time to prove it in court, but what I'm saying is true. Internet is NOT a vague term. Internet means what you get at your home PC screen. "Limited Internet" means something different. The promise of something good which is not delivered is just as wrong as snake oil salesmen that promise a cure. Obviously medical claims seem to fall under different rulings, but the intent of the law, and it's execution are the same. Fine print does not excuse you from delivering what your marketing group promised. ever.
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Re:So what is Sprint providing its customers? (Score:5, Informative)
Those machines are not on the internet, they connect to the internet.
Probably(hopefully) a troll, but I'll bite.
There is no "internet". There is only progressively smaller networks. The ISPs all own their own networks, they communicate with one another via an IBX, or a "meet-me-room". Your company's LAN is a network just like theirs, only smaller (well...depending on what company you work for..some can get to the size of a small ISP). The fact that you don't have an agreement with your ISP to route their traffic to your machines does not mean that they are not part of "the internet".
Think about it like this:
There is an office building, each floor is a separate company. Each company runs their own network. After a while, a couple of the companies decide that they should share information with one another, so they do. They connect their networks to one another and start routing between them. Things are good. Now a few more companies jump on board, before you know it, 40 out of the 50 networks in the building are all talking to one another. THAT is the internet.
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Asshats (Score:5, Insightful)
I wonder how many customers these two companies will have to lose before they realize that the right solution is to sack the lawyers.
Re:Asshats (Score:5, Informative)
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Guess what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Lawyers don't cause litigation. Parties cause litigation.
IAAL. The matters which go to court are the ones where the parties are unreasonable, overly aggressive, or genuinely have a dispute about something which is worth money to both of them. It may also amaze you to learn that sometimes parties actually do breach contracts or otherwise fuck one another over, and yet when caught out they don't automatically roll over and return what they owe to the person they have wronged.
I have no influence whatsoever over whether they end up in Court. I advise my clients about their rights and prospects, and follow their instructions.
On the whole, reasonable, intelligent parties = no ligitation = no lawyers.
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Lawyers and clients (Score:5, Interesting)
Re - "It is the wish of my client." -- I'm reminded of what Richard Nixon's lawyer [wikipedia.org] famously said while arguing before the US Supreme Court in US v. Nixon [wikipedia.org]: "The President wants me to argue that he is as powerful a monarch as Louis XIV, only four years at a time, and is not subject to the processes of any court in the land except the court of impeachment." He knew it was a nutty position to take, so he explicitly stated that it was his client's position, not his.
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Something is Fishy Here (Score:5, Interesting)
note to self (Score:5, Insightful)
boycot sprint for fracturing the internet
Re:note to self (Score:5, Interesting)
I think what happened in Monticello, MN with the city laying down their own fiber when TDS telcom (the local telco) refused to is definitely a step in that direction...
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Neutrality (Score:5, Interesting)
This is what the world might look like without Net Neutrality.
Re:Neutrality (Score:5, Informative)
Net neutrality can't force tier1/2 network carriers to peer.
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Cogent depeering (Score:5, Informative)
Why does this story sound familiar...right, because I've heard it twice before. In 2003 it was AOL who cut them off [isp-planet.com], then in 2005 Level 3 [tmcnet.com] did the same thing.
While it seems Sprint is to blame here, when I see Cogent on the bad end of this so many times I can't help but wonder how many of these problems are brought on by their own management. It's not too often you get to see a pair of N/A results on the health report [internetpulse.net], but as you can read that's exactly what happened in 2005 as well.
Cogent is the one behind the story in link (Score:5, Informative)
What generally happens is that these tier 1 ISPs start off with equal amount of traffic that is being routed on behalf of the other ISP so they're both giving each other equal value. But that balance shifts over the years and you might have one ISP giving back 1/8th of what they're taking but the larger ISP is afraid of bad PR if they sever the connection. What might be needed is some sort of arbitrator who will look in to the facts without blaming one side or the other and just examine the facts and issue a recommendation. During that period of arbitration, the peering should continue so that customers aren't affected. If one ISP is found to be unworthy of a settlement peering arrangement because they're not holding up their end of the bargain, then they should be ordered to pay. If they refuse to pay, they deserve the blame for not paying for their Internet backbone.
Plenty of ISPs pay for their peering arrangements if they're not able to build some backbones of equal value. There's no reason some ISPs should get a settlement free peering if they're not willing to upgrade the Internet's backbone infrastructure.
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This may be just the beginning of this stuff... (Score:5, Interesting)
As of now, there are no laws that an ISP has to deliver packets to any site, or any port.
IMHO, this is just the start of this type of activity. Eventually (assuming no regulation is done), ISPs will just refuse traffic from any domain who doesn't pay them a certain amount per bit per month. So, if Yahoo doesn't pay ISP "A" a fee so their bits will go across, all that ISP's subscribers would see either the destination unreachable, or even worse, be redirected to another site.
As of now, there are no laws against ISPs doing this. One could in the future attempt to go to their bank, be redirected to another bank because the other bank pays the ISP to carry their traffic and refuse the other bank access.
disruptive pricing (Score:5, Interesting)
All of Cogent's previous de-peering problems were ultimately due to their ultra low prices and their ability to steal customers. I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case again. Everyone has a lot of money to lose with Cogent's $6/Mbps pricing today. It undercuts everyone else. Cogent is basically wiping them clean (and not making much money in the process.) Ultimately they are banking on MUCH larger uses in the future. But their business model is not exactly profitable.
A table is worth a thousand pictures... (Score:5, Informative)
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