Sprint, Cogent in Peering FeudSprint disconnects from Cogent network, impacting customers
(
old news - 08:51AM Friday Oct 31 2008)
tags: business · bandwidth · trouble · networkingTipped by insomniac 
Cogent is no stranger to peering disputes, fighting with Level3
back in 2005 and AOL
back in 2002. While most peering arrangements involve carriers trading equal amounts of bandwidth, Cogent's discount Mc-bandwidth approach (100 Mbps for $1,000 per month or less) often involves a sharing imbalance, which results in one side or the other feeling slighted. The fights are usually resolved in time, but they're never much fun for the users impacted. A high profile dispute with Swedish telecom operator Telia in March cut off access to vast swaths of Europe.
These Cogent disputes are almost as frequent as the seasons, and we were long overdue for a new one. The latest fight came last night, when Cogent
announced that Sprint pulled the plug on their connection with the Cogent network, impacting a significant amount of both URLs and broadband customers. According to Cogent, the onus for the fight lays squarely on the shoulders of Sprint. Cogent says they're offering a little something to major Sprint-Nextel customers impacted by the feud:
In the over 1300 on-net locations worldwide where Cogent provides service, Cogent is offering every Sprint-Nextel wireline customer that is unable to connect to Cogent's customers a free 100 megabit per second connection to the Internet for as long as Sprint continues to keep this partitioning of the Internet in place. Unfortunately, there is no way that Cogent can do the same for the wireless customers of Sprint-Nextel.
You can visually see the disruption, as usual, over at
Internet Pulse.
Update: Sprint spokesperson Matthew Sullivan contacted us to present Sprint's side of the story. Sullivan had this to say:
This is a quick snapshot, but in 2006, Sprint and Cogent entered into a commercial trial agreement. Cogent filed to satisfy Sprint’s peering criteria and refused to pay Sprint to stay connected to our network. Sprint notified Cogent well in advance that it would disconnect Cogent unless it paid, and Cogent refused. As a result of Cogent’s refusal, Sprint was forced to terminate the commercial interconnection agreement and disconnect its network from Cogent’s.
Cogent’s posturing in this case is nothing more than an effort to divert attention away from its’ contractual obligations, and this is the latest in a growing list of peering-related disputes between Cogent and Internet backbone providers.
