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."

That's what happens...

[Doug52392]

This just goes to show you what happens when the money obsessed CEOs of corporations argue: The customers lose!

First post btw :)

Re:That's what happens...

[xstonedogx]

The thought of them arguing is much less frightening to me than the thought of them holding hands and skipping through a field of daisies together. ...for a couple reasons.

Re:

[MightyMartian]

The thought of them arguing is much less frightening to me than the thought of them holding hands and skipping through a field of daisies together. ...for a couple reasons.

If you're one of the people affected by this, I doubt the difference is all that compelling.

Re:

[dpilot]

On the other hand, if your employer is dependent on Internet service, it may well force him to cut back on his business.

THAT could put you out on the street, starving and homeless.

Re:

[iamhassi]

The thought of them arguing is much less frightening to me than the thought of them holding hands and skipping through a field of daisies together"

why? All i want is internet. I don't care what they're doing in the cornfield behind Mr. McGregor's barn as long as the internet works. Them arguing is what scares me because that affects me.

Re:

[ockegheim]

If that's what it takes to get their customers' friggin' internet to work properly, so be it.

How much for only half an Internet?

[davidwr]

If I'm paying $50/month for Internet access, do I get half of that back if I can only get to half the Internet?

This isn't a silly question:
If YOU are the ISP, and YOUR actions are causing ME to not be able to get to SOMEONE ELSE, then my lawyers will try to hold YOU responsible.

Stupidity like this will cause both companies problems with their customers in court and in the marketplace.

Re:How much for only half an Internet?

[bagboy]

Do you people even read your TOS? You are not guaranteed anything without an SLA.

Re:

[Minupla]

Yes, but since the customers of these companies tend towards the type of customers who do pay for SLAs (ISPs, companies rather then home users) I think the point is valid. Personally I've never used either of them as a provider, so I don't know how their SLAs are written, and they probably don't provide any assurances beyond their boundary, but I think an argument could be made that since the problem is demonstrably an issue within their control (a contract dispute) that the SLA should hold.

Min

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:

[Dan541]

Do you people even read your TOS? You are not guaranteed anything without an SLA.

Doesn't matter there should still be consumer protection laws in place to protect customers.

~Dan

Re:

[adolf]

SLA == Service Level Agreement. Most Slashdotters seem to think that an SLA means something like "OMG! Wonderful fat pipe all for me!!!", but it's just a contract, much like the TOS that the same Slashdotters seem to blame for everything including world hunger.

In fact, since they're both just contracts, either one can be good for the customer, or bad for the customer. The only innate differences are three words at the top of the page, which is about as insignificant a distinction as I can think of.

Re:

[Lennie]

However you slice or dice it, the SLA usually just handles with connectivity, it doesn't say to what.

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.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

I would say it's not safe to even use Cogent or Level 3 period after more than 5 years of dealing with them both extensively. Too many peering issues coming out of nowhere.

Re:How much for only half an Internet?

[cgenman]

They charge so little for bandwidth that it's hard to resist picking them as your #2.

Coincidentally, they've also chosen you for their #2.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's time you showed those turds who's the boss.

Re:

[lth]

Spot on. Until now we've been relying on Cogent as our sole internet provider, which we've been cursing ourselves for the last couple of days.

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 h

Re:How much for only half an Internet?

[Brian Gordon]

All ISPs take you to the same internet, so why pay more than you have to! :)

Re:

[ehaggis]

I would personally pay more for bigger, more reliable tubes to the internets. I'm not worried thought, I have a closet full of AOL disks that have the internet on them, no need to connect.

Re:How much for only half an Internet?

[rucs_hack]

If YOU are the ISP, and YOUR actions are causing ME to not be able to get to SOMEONE ELSE, then my lawyers will try to hold YOU responsible.

Are you a coder? It's just that your post resembles an SQL statement.

Re:

[Sydney Weidman]

If YOU are the ISP, and YOUR actions are causing ME to not be able to get to SOMEONE ELSE, then my lawyers will try to hold YOU responsible.

Are you a coder? It's just that your post resembles an SQL statement.

Naw, It was a loose connection on his caps lock key.

Re:How much for only half an Internet?

[Neil Hodges]

SELECT * from SLASHDOTTERS where SQL_KNOWLEDGE = 1;

There, fixed it for you.

Re:How much for only half an Internet?

[fm6]

Stupidity like this will cause both companies problems with their customers in court and in the marketplace.

I don't think a few disgruntled Swedish users are going to have much of a legal or economic impact on Cogent. Telia certainly will suffer, but they're not the ones that pulled the plug. According to Cogent, this is all Telia's fault for not being a good peering partner. But there really ought to be a better way to settle this than disrupting Internet access for millions of people.

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:

[the_arrow]

I don't think a few disgruntled Swedish users are going to have much of a legal or economic impact on Cogent.

Telia is part of Telia-Sonera, which is big in all of the Nordic countries and also has presence in the rest of Europe. Also, many big companies here use Telia, for example Ericsson.
So it's not just "a few disgruntled Swedish users."

Re:

[onepoint]

I am going to assume the following based that I was a host
and I did care a lot about this very issue with my clients:

They might be hosted at the Telia server room, but at the
meet-me-room they are also sharing pipes with multiple
other providers. They have to, they need to keep the latency
to a low level.

They should have few to no problems since, most likely
have peering pipes directly to London, Paris and other
locations ( real big peering locations ).

The current issues that they should be encountering is
modify

Re:

[TooMuchToDo]

It's Cogent's network. They can decide who to accept traffic from and who to deny traffic from. They're not violating safe harbor provisions since their decisions don't involve the actual content flowing on the network, just the source/destinations.

Re:

[budgenator]

Well at least with European Grade Broadband you can get nowhere really fast!

Again?

[Constantine XVI]

Didn't this happen a few years back? Level3 and Cogent, IIRC

Re:

[jamie]

Good memory! I've added as Related Stories the stories that Slashdot ran at the time. Thanks.

Re:Again?

[Cervantes]

Didn't this happen a few years back? Level3 and Cogent, IIRC

Wow. It's almost like you read the article or something...

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:

[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 cu

Re:

[iminplaya]

Never said anything here about conspiracies or rights. This is merely the result of the proverbial "too many eggs in one basket". or conversely, "too many chefs..." It's why we need good, efficient government services to prevent these companies from taking down the whole thing. We could have that if we simply demanded it. And these piddly arguments would pass unnoticed outside of the belligerents' offices. If the service is critical enough, then the government should step in and tell them to turn the switch

Re:

[quanticle]

Yes. We should have government step in and regulate, because government has done such a good job of regulating technology in the past.</sarcasm>

Re:

[DeepHurtn!]

Long distance phone calls work, right? Pretty damn reliably, as a matter of fact. And -- GASP -- it's a UN organization [wikipedia.org] that maintains the system! ZOMG NWO One World Government GET THE GUNS MA!!!

Re:Yep

[fingusernames]

Um, I used to use this Internet thingy when it was ARPAnet, before the advent of private backbones. I remember HOSTS.TXT and the real InterNIC. And yes, it was originally designed to route around major failures. That was one of the reasons DARPA, e.g. the military, funded it. It may have not done it perfectly, it may not have been able to survive a full-on nuclear conflict, but it was certainly designed and funded in good part as a research project into network robustness in the face of catastrophe.

Ever since the backbones went private though, all bets are off. You are entirely correct as of the early 90s. As we all know, it's "my network, my rules." Hence this peering spat, and the ones before, and the ones to come.

Larry

Re:Yep

[QuantumRiff]

You'll notice that none of these are the faults of the technology, but the faults of the Humans (or lawyer/accountant equivalents).

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

[morbiuswilters]

The Internet is built on cooperation. If two companies can't agree on how they will connect, then it seems they have that right. Just like their customers have the right to move to a different provider. Personally, if I was seriously affected by this I would never do business with either of the involved parties again. Hopefully people will leave and that will push them to negotiate, but I don't think they should be forced to work together if they don't want to.

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)

Re:

[mbone]

I don't see why that is true. Charter Cable may use Qwest's circuits but do they use Qwest's BGP peering ? Not according to my BGP tables. So, if Qwest and (say) Cogent get in a fight, it shouldn't effect Charter, and maybe not the other "small ISPs" you mention, at least if they are properly multi-homed.

Internet is vital now...

[JustinOpinion]

There was a time when the Internet was more like a novelty or hobby project. Those of us using it were on the fringe, and nothing that we did on the 'net was vital.

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:

[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 m

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:

[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

Re:

[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

Re:

[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:

[GauteL]

"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."

No, but it took many years for these companies to switch from old fashioned paper/pencil to an Internet based infrastructure. Literally years of mindset changes, development, procedural chances and investments.

What makes you think that they would be able to switch back to paper/pencil in just a few days if the Internet suddenly 'disappeared'?

Re:

[fingusernames]

Note what you wrote:

"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

Re:

[Secrity]

Well, Comcast claims that the FCC can't control them.

Re:

[Citizen of Earth]

Can you imagine driving to work one day and finding roads blocked because of a contract dispute?

Guess you don't live in Ontario. If you're not careful, the courts might get you to sign an agreement saying that you'll stop blocking traffic.

Re:Internet is vital now...

[mi]

Can you imagine driving to work one day and finding roads blocked because of a contract dispute?

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:Internet is vital now...

[nogginthenog]

Happens all the time in France.

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.

Re:

[Phroggy]

Can you imagine driving to work one day and finding roads blocked because of a contract dispute?

Can you imagine trying to ride the subway to work one day and finding they weren't running because of a contract [wikipedia.org] dispute [usatoday.com]?

Re:

[Anubis350]

Can you imagine driving to work one day and finding roads blocked because of a contract dispute? You, apparently, have never driven in Pennsylvania :-p

Potholes, Packet Loss, pretty much the same thing

[billstewart]

It's been a while since I've lived back East. I don't remember highways in PA getting actually blocked, but there was always either construction going on which slowed you down, or roads that badly needed repair, so the potholes slowed you down. This is like having a barrier across the entire road and forcing you to drive down to Philly or up to Port Jervis.

Re:

[failedlogic]

Alternatives? I'm thinking a Co-Op would be a neat idea, though hard to implement. But, I think in general its a good idea *because* we all have a vested interest in keeping the Internet running.

I don't know if a government utility is a solution. Its not so much a "performance". With all governments and the way their funding and policy works, it becomes a question of boundaries and responsibilities. Do you setup a national super-utility or do you let each State or each major city figure it out for themselve

The Internet *is* a Co-Op; they're not cooperating

[billstewart]

The Internet *is* a co-op, as well as an idea for how everything should be connected together. There isn't any central backbone, and hasn't been for years; there are a bunch of large providers who connect together, a bunch of interconnection points, and a bunch of smaller providers and service providers who connect to either the big ISPs or the IXs or both. The big ISPs can make money (at least sometimes :-) because they're able to provide the value of connecting everybody together.

The question is whether

Re:

[wytcld]

Cogent is being idiots. Cogent provides fat fiber pipes for a number of crucial players in the New York City-based financial industry - players who are engaged in daily data exchange over the Net. Yes, there's most often a backup connection from another provider. But the automation around this stuff generally is based on logic like "if Cogent line down, switch outgoing traffic to Brand X line and advertise IPs on Brand X on DNS in place of Cogent IPs." Since the Cogent line is up and generally working in th

Re:

[dpilot]

> The Internet has grown to become a vital infrastructure.
> with respect to most utilities (roads, water, electricity, phone)

Aah, you used that word, "utility," that means many things to many people, but in this case there are specific legal and governmental meanings to it. So we have to clarify here...

Repeat after me... The Internet is NOT a utility.

Utilities are tightly regulated by some government agency, typically a Public Service Board. Oddly enough, the phone and cable that likely deliver you

It affects me

[BenoitRen]

I hope they settle this dispute soon, because it has affected me several times in the past week.

I live in Europe, and am the co-administrator of Phantasy Star Cave. One day I couldn't access it for hours, so I traced the domain, and telia was the node it stopped at. So when I saw this story I was like "That's it! That was the problem!".

Also affects WoW players...

[WinterSilence]

Also no one playing World of Warcraft using Cogent as ISP can connect to any WoW servers, since Blizzard use Telia's backbone...
This is listed in-game in WoW currently at the login screen.

Re:

[megaditto]

View it as s a chance to become addicted in reverse.

Spend some time with a family, read a book, post on slashdot, go out on a date or something. Treat this blackout as a chance to live a little.

Monthly fee?!? Re:Also affects WoW players

[Ang31us]

I'm glad I'm not paying Blizzard a monthly fee to play World of Warcrack.

Re:

[Omnedon]

Entropia Universe uses Telia and I am sitting here in Michigan with an idle machine that I bought specifically to play that game. Not just Scandinavia "unhappy".

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

[Phroggy]

You said "whoever's wrong, get over it." The problem is that each side thinks the other side is wrong.

Re:

[postbigbang]

And the point is: we don't care. Cogent? Yank them. Telia? Ex-PTT that smells as bad as Deutsche Telekom (in this case, anyway).. Yank them. Misbehaving child-like ISPs? Goodbye. This 2008, not 1998.

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

[TooMuchToDo]

As a Cogent customer who buys several tens of gigabits/second of transit from them all across the world, I could care less of the spat. It's going to happen. Level3 didn't like Cogent selling bandwidth 90-100 dollars less per megabit.

At the end of the day, some things will be unreachable, but the Internet isn't indestructible anymore. Things will break, and we move on.

Re:

[postbigbang]

A good attitude if Telia's fixed & dchp'd clients don't mean anything to you. I get the feeling Telia's the one that's facing the most trouble. It's only a guess.

Re:

[TooMuchToDo]

In the grand scheme of things, Telia's fixed and dhcp clients are a small minority of the entire Net. Shouldn't Telia customers complain to Telia that they should upgrade their peering links with Cogent (as that is what this disagreement is about)?

Re:

[postbigbang]

In Scandia, they're big medicine. Let's see who drives off the cliff. Personally, I'd rather just route around them. Perhaps an evil subnet concoction would do it.

Third Parties

[EverlastingPhelps]

Sounds like Verizon and Blizzard need to fire up the old legal teams and start filing tortious interference [wikipedia.org] suits on Cogent.

Death throws?

[davolfman]

In my limited experience de-peering like this usually precedes an ISP death. Other people have probably figured this out so it wouldn't surprise me if this is having a negative effect on stock prices. It makes you wonder why anyone would ever consider it a valid option if they aren't just a rat jumping ship. It just looks bad.

Re:

[billstewart]

(Throes, said the grammar police....)

It doesn't look as bad as the Cogent - Level3 de-peering incident a few years ago, but both sides have recovered from that one. Cogent's always been an interesting player, though some years they've looked kind of marginal. I first ran into them around 2001, when they were selling 100 Mbps Ethernet connections for about the same price other carriers charged for 1-2 T1s. They could afford to do this in part because they were selling to large multi-tenant buildings, so t

Their customers are reacting

[RollingThunder]

I know that at least one company that's been affected (Cornered Rat Software, who run the MMOFPS World War II Online) are seriously considering getting an AS of their own after this, so that if nothing else, they will be able to say "Telia's traffic can get to us via this route" and bypass Cogent's pettiness. I'd cite, but it was a post by one of their guys on a subscriber-only forum.

Re:

[jroysdon]

They'd need more than just their own AS, they'd need provider-independant space and/or netblocks not from Telia. Otherwise, I suspect Cogent would still drop the traffic.

Also affects email traffic in the US & Europe

[vinsci]

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:

[TooMuchToDo]

I doubt anyone will move. Temporary network segregation is a price to pay for getting super-cheap transit. I'd rather have these little spats then get raped by "Tier 1 providers" such as Level3 who try to justify extremely high prices per megabit.

Re:

[mxs]

I hope that ibiblio & the internet archive (archive.org) are moved away from their current hosting on Cogent's network, urgently.

You paying ?
Thought so.

Great timing to send urgent business email, normally delivered within seconds, only to find out that it has never been received.

You rely on email for critical communication ? Not a good idea.

I do wonder if this active sabotage of 3rd party Internet traffic might be class-actionable.

You suing ?
Thought so.

Of course e-mail is just a tiny part of the overall losses that 3rd parties suffer from this.

And if you have a contract with either level3 or teliasonera that includes sla provisions protecting you from this, call them. If you don't, switch your ISP.

Re:

[vinsci]

I hope that ibiblio & the internet archive (archive.org) are moved away from their current hosting on Cogent's network, urgently.

You paying ? Thought so.

The Internet works by everybody paying their own share of the costs. I'm not paying for your connectivity costs, you're not paying for mine. Note that if you don't pay enough to cover your ISP's real costs, your ISP will start behaving like Cogent does and you're then part of the problem.

Great timing to send urgent business email, normally del

Re:

[mxs]

I hope that ibiblio & the internet archive (archive.org) are moved away from their current hosting on Cogent's network, urgently.

You paying ? Thought so.

The Internet works by everybody paying their own share of the costs. I'm not paying for your connectivity costs, you're not paying for mine. Note that if you don't pay enough to cover your ISP's real costs, your ISP will start behaving like Cogent does and you're then part of the problem.

So that is a no to you paying ibiblio and archive.org's move to a different provider then, got it.

Great timing to send urgent business email, normally delivered within seconds, only to find out that it has never been received.

You rely on email for critical communication ? Not a good idea.

Of course I do and so does everybody else.

Internally, MAYBE. Externally ? Well, they must've some shoddy IT department then if they can't make it clear that email is a best-effort service.

Don't be silly.

I'm not. You have no way of knowing whether your mail reached its intended

Ted Stevens

[ruinevil]

Ten movies streaming across that, that Internet, and what happens to your own personal Internet? I just the other day got... an Internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday, I got it yesterday [Tuesday]. Why? Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the Internet commercially.

[...] They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the Internet. And again, the Internet is not something that you just dump something on. It's not a big truck. It's a series of tubes.

Did this happen during Level3/Cogent delinking feud?

The need for BAPPs (Big-Ass Peering Pipes)

[1sockchuck]

According to Wired, Cogent felt Telia didn't provide "fat enough pipes." The capacity of peering connections [datacenterknowledge.com] is becoming a point of tension in a growing number of peering relationships. Video traffic is driving strong demand for 10 gigabit Ethernet connections for peering, but some major ISPs are apparently reluctant to upgrade, asserting that the financial benefits of big-pipe peering don't offset the short-term expense of network upgrades needed to support 10gigE. The economics of peering is a tricky business sometimes, and video traffic is complicating the equation.

Re:

[TooMuchToDo]

Cogent's right. Telia's peering point connection is, shall we say, lacking in several locations. This is causing Cogent to have to waste long-haul capacity to push the traffic to other points.

Re:

[jroysdon]

Cogent can drop their peer links to Telia. But they shouldn't drop traffic from Telia via other peers that are paying for transit through Cogent.

It's like a shipping saying, "Yeah, we deliver there" and then ditching the delivery. If Cogent says they deliver somewhere (say UUNET), don't drop traffic to UUNET just because the source was from Telia. In reverse, don't drop traffic to Sprint just because the final destination will be Telia.

The problem is that Cogent is actively saying they can get traffic fr

Re:

[TooMuchToDo]

As a fairly large Cogent customer (transit, not transport), I'd have to disagree. If Telia is simply going to drop peering and force Cogent to waste bandwidth at other interconnection points (because Telia refuses to upgrade it's own peering points with Cogent), why should Cogent accept their traffic via any route? Frankly, you're right, Telia is too small for me to care all that much. If I had a significant client base there, I could always pull connectivity from Global Crossing, Teleglobe, etc. to reach t

Re:

[jroysdon]

Playing devil's advocate: With that same arguement, why should Cogent accept traffic from any ISP who won't peer directly with them?

What it comes down to is that is the way the internet works. You peer with someone who gives you transit. If you're a large ISP, you try to peer with others who are of the same size and you don't charge each other.

Re:

[mikael_j]

Of course, it was Cogent that dropped peering and then proceeded to block alternate routes to their network for any traffic that originates in Telia's network.

Also, Telia is hardly "too small for [you] to care", in both europe and the US they are a regional Tier 1 and with over 30k employees in the entire company (TeliaSonera) and $16 billion in revenue last year they're not exactly tiny...

/Mikael

traceroute looks interesting

[Ang31us]

I traced to oxford.edu (went through Telia) and stanford.edu (went through Cogent); interesting latency spikes and a few dropped packets when I ping both. Just started a ping to my ISP for a control.

Works fine...

[swehack]

I'm in Sweden on two connections, one bahnhof, which rents most of it's fiber from Telia, and one IP-Only which has it's own atlantic cable, both work fine against Groglaw for me. Which is funny really because i know Telia owns most of the fiber in Sweden and that Bahnhof for example rents most of it's fiber and equipment from Telia.

Proxies still work

[Frantactical Fruke]

I spent five days trying to find out why archive.org was down. Found out more by accident once an online friend told me his connection was fine. So now I rewrite all addresses that don't work with coralcdn.org's proxy. Maybe I shouldn't have mentioned this. Now the bastards will probably try to cut that connection, as well.

Could we please somehow replace these monolithic networks with peer to peer wireless connections or some such? There has to be some way of freeing our internet from the grasp of monopolis

Re:

[bersl2]

Telia tried to route through other carriers. Cogent blocked this after half a day.

Disgusting if you ask me.

Re:Route around?

[dave562]

You're missing the fact that at the upper tiers of the internet, there are only so many routes available. There are simply somethings that can't be routed around because the ONLY route to where you want to go involves passing packets across the network you are trying to route around. Consider a smaller example. You want to route traffic to a Verizon DSL customer. Verizon has decided it doesn't want to pass your packets to the DSL customer. No matter how you try to route it, since Verizon sold the DSL service and controls the last few hops in the route, you simply can't route to the customer any other way.

The current issue involves "peering arrangements/agreements." Do a Google search if you want an in depth explination of what exactly a peering arrangement is all about. The short version is that ISPs agree to pass each others traffic across their networks. That's the way the internet works. Every ISP can't have a router in every place that a router needs to be placed. So they "share" each routes with each other.

Re:

[jroysdon]

I think the bigger problem is that some of Telia's links didn't have any other path except Cogent. That should mean that those Telia sites are totally dead in the water. If they're routing properly, and have multiple paths to other providers, it shouldn't matter if Cogent shuts down a link (except things just get slower).

Telia should be able to send traffic via their other link(s) which should also have peering at some point to Cogent. The other problem that I suspect the problem is that Cogent is droppi

Re:

[jroysdon]

I looked up the groklaw.net site (152.46.7.105), and then see it is coming via AS81 (North Carolina Research and Education Network), which is has a BGP path (peer or customer) to AS174 (Cogent).

AS174 shows it is announcing AS81 groklaw.net site prefix 152.46.7.0/24 to big peers like AS701 (UUNET/MCI/Verizon), AS7018 (ATT), AS1239 (Sprint). Telia also peers with all 3 of these Tier 1 ISPs.

Cogent is violating its peering agreements with those peers by not routing traffic from them to AS81 (which they must do

Re:

[dave562]

Telia should be able to send traffic via their other link(s) which should also have peering at some point to Cogent. The other problem that I suspect the problem is that Cogent is dropping Telia traffic coming in from Cogent's other peers. Cogent shouldn't do this, it breaks the internet. If Cogent is announcing prefixes to other peers, they need to receive all non-abusive traffic from those other peers, not null-route it.

That is exactly what is going on. Cogent is dropping all traffic that originates fro

Re:Route around?

[jroysdon]

Cogent's customers need to sue Cogent over this. It's fine if AS174 (Cogent) doesn't want to accept routes that include AS1299 (Telia). However, if AS174 announces AS81's prefixes to its peers, which in turn peer with AS1299, then it must accept all traffic to AS81, as they have a contract agreement (customer or peer) with AS81 (where groklaw.net is hosted) and with the intermediate peer. It doesn't have to give AS81 any routes to AS1299, and AS81 has other peers that can route the traffic to AS1299, so the return traffic doesn't even need Cogent.

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:

[mbone]

Are you sure it's Cogent and not TELIANET ? The reason I ask is that I get AS 3308 - TELIANET-DENMARK through Cogent
using their AS 1299 - TELIANET peering :

174 3292 15423 2686 1299 3308

In fact, I am getting routes from 28 ASN through AS 1299.

But I get nothing from AS 1299 directly.

Cogent is thus allowing traffic that transits AS 1299 - and so it is not clear to me which side is blocking the 1299 routes.

(Cogent may have taken the peering down, but TELIANET may not want their traffic to u

Re:

[knarf]

Replying to my own posting here: Garden Networks [gardennetworks.org]' GTunnel [gardennetworks.com] works with wine on Linux so if you don't feel like setting up a Tor [torproject.org] node and don't want to hunt for anonymizing proxies on the web you can use that instead. If you add the Switchproxy [mozilla.org] or (preconfigured for GTunnel etc.) GProxy [gpass1.com] extension to Firefox you can switch between your normal net connection (with or without proxy) and the anonymizer.