spewak
R.I.P Dadkins
Premium
join:2001-08-07
Elk Grove, CA |  Well what do expect?
Kids acting like spoiled brats, not wanting to share their toys! 
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The weekend is here, grab a can of beer! |
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hescominsoon
join:2003-02-18
Brunswick, MD
 ·Comcast
 ·Verizon Online DSL
| This is how corporate control of the inet is bad
This "peering" is what called this. Because they decided to block each other..that also meant the internet ability to route around the outage was also blocked by sprint and cogent...neither would allow each other's traffic to get to the other. This article makes it look like sprint's fault but more determined research online shows Cogent to be the cumprit..not sprint. The blackhole caused by this was the fault of both companies not allowing the traffic to route around the outage like the internet was supposed to do. |
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rantou
join:2002-06-04
Richardson, TX
| Those unapologetic SOBs...
I don't really know anymore if I am pro =-network-neutrality or against it, but this is definitely a game that shouldn't have been played on both of these providers' parts. It was really an act of being childish. The network that I maintain has links from multiple providers (Cogent being one of them, Sprint not.) and for some reason when everything took a dive all of our sprint/nextel data services no longer would connect to our servers, as well as all of our clients too. This was really frustrating, and with absolutely no warning or anything. Now why didn't Sprint routes hop on to one of the other providers that we are peered with that they are as well? That's another question that I don't think I can answer.
Maybe Cogent had a blackhole route created then for all AS1239 traffic? Of course then it would be a single hop from us and again would cause problems as our other links (Internap which puts us 2 hops from the Internet, and as well Xeex which puts us 2 hops from the Internet) would have more hops to get to Sprint.
I think it was a very unthoughtful thing for them to do. They could have at least graciously removed their peering agreements to not disrupt Internet traffic nearly as much as they did. |
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koitsu
Premium
join:2002-07-16
Mountain View, CA
1 edit | None of this should really matter.
You see, the problem at hand isn't petty disputes like what's been documented. Those happen all the time with peering/transport companies (really!).
The problem is (explained in layman's terms to keep it simple) that both sides did not configure their equipment to "fail over" to an alternate peer/provider in the case any of the Sprint/Cogent links went down. This may have been done intentionally (based on the contract), or maybe by accident (just because they're big companies doesn't mean they're immune to idiocy).
Regardless, said links were considered "exclusive", in the sense that if they went down, neither would route packets through alternate providers to reach their destination.
That there, folks, is the core of the problem.
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Making life hard for others since 1977.
I speak for myself and not my employer/affiliates of my employer. |
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DaSneaky1D
one wall to block them all
Premium,MVM
join:2001-03-29
The Lou
·Charter Pipeline
| Do you really think that Sprint or Cogent didn't "properly configure their equipment" that caused this? LOL, really, do you really think that they didn't know how to fail-over to alternate providers and that caused the outage?
If anything, this really goes to show how many true Tier II (and lower) providers depend on Sprint and Cogent for their transit. If they couldn't route around those two depeering from each other, then that's the problem.
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:: my trivial ramblings :: |
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jmr50
join:2000-05-14
Chantilly, VA
| reply to koitsu
Nope, you're wrong.
That's not how settlement-free interconnect works -- Cogent doesn't have a "default" or "last resort" route to send traffic through. It has to send Sprint traffic to Sprint, or starting paying someone for transit (which is what they have done in a number of cases where they were de-peered in the past with Level3, Telia, ATDN, France Telecom, etc). If they just started sending all their Sprint traffic to Level3, they'd be violating their SFI agreement with Level3 who would then be able to de-peer them. |
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bugabuga
join:2004-06-10
Austin, TX
| reply to koitsu
Re: None of this should really matter.
I thought that when Cogent "de-peers" someone who was their peer they generally blackhole the traffic on their end?
Plus, given that other interlinks are ususally balanced, sudden surge of traffic intended to a peer can screw that up too (so Level 3 or whoever would start complaining at Cogent that their traffic became disproportionate etc etc)
Frankly I see how Sprint would want to squeeze out money, and I hope Cogent will win every one of the peering wars  Because if it wasn't for Cogent, the prices would be even higher. Sure, you can hiccups. But I think it's worth it. And those who complain can always move to another provider, that is 5% more stable at 10 times the cost 
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Странные новости почти каждый день |
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espaeth
Digital Plumber
Premium,MVM
join:2001-04-21
Minneapolis, MN
 ·voip.ms
·Vitelity VOIP
·Callcentric
·VoiceStick
·ViaTalk
·Comcast
·Embarq
| Riddled with errors
After a counter-suit by Cogent, which said Sprint was free to disconnect the 10 links between the two companies, that's exactly what Sprint did on October 30. Funny, because public rviews data (FixedOrbit / potaroo / others) shows several routing changes between Sprint and Cogent in the month of October that lines up with Sprint's assertion that they disconnected the circuits over several weeks.
Days after the trial completed in 2007, Sprint proclaimed at Cogent failed the test, despite the two carriers sending equal amounts of bandwidth. According to Sprint, Cogent didn't send enough as determined by the contract I'm not sure if Karl copied this wrong, or if Forbes has since corrected their story. The article now reads "This time, however, Sprint's objection was that the direct links between the two giant networks hadn't carried enough traffic under the terms of the contract. " removing the directionality blunder that either Karl created or the original article contained. The issue was that Cogent wasn't taking on enough traffic from Sprint, so Cogent customers sending to Sprint derived more value from the connection than Sprint customers sending to Cogent. |
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Karl Bode
News Guy
join:2000-03-02 | That was my error in interpretation, thanks. |
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espaeth
Digital Plumber
Premium,MVM
join:2001-04-21
Minneapolis, MN
·voip.ms
·Vitelity VOIP
·Callcentric
·VoiceStick
·ViaTalk
·Comcast
·Embarq
| reply to rantou
Re: Those unapologetic SOBs...
said by rantou  :Maybe Cogent had a blackhole route created then for all AS1239 traffic? No. Cogent doesn't get AS1239 routes unless they peer directly with AS1239, or pay an intermediate network for access to AS1239 routes. (paying for transit leaks routes in both directions)
Cogent could have paid NTT/Verio for transit access to AS1239 and just prepended the routes in each direction so the NTT path wouldn't be used unless the Sprint direct connections dropped. They instead chose to play chicken with an established Tier1 carrier; you can't sell bandwidth at $4/megabit without cutting several corners. |
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skuv
@rr.com
| reply to espaeth
Re: Riddled with errors
said by espaeth :The issue was that Cogent wasn't taking on enough traffic from Sprint, so Cogent customers sending to Sprint derived more value from the connection than Sprint customers sending to Cogent. That's not really true at all, or Sprint wouldn't have turned the connections back up.
The value is both ways. Just because I'm a Sprint customer sending 80-byte http requests but receiving 1500-byte packets full of http data, doesn't mean I am getting less value than the Cogent customer I'm requesting from.
I WANTED that data as a Sprint customer, and the data is valuable to me, as a Sprint customer. I expect Sprint to get data to me that is valuable to me, if I am paying them for a connection. |
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patcat88
join:2002-04-05
Jamaica, NY | reply to jmr50
Re: Nope, you're wrong.
So who is Cogent's last resort?
»fixedorbit.com/AS/0/AS174.htm
This can't possibly be every IP in the world. |
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floridaguy
@cox.net | reply to skuv
Re: Riddled with errors
Well said.
Sprint's customers are the ones requesting data from Cogent's customers. |
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