 
amenite
The Soylent - It's People
Premium
join:2002-11-21
Ridgewood, NJ
clubs:
 ·Verizon Online DSL
| 2+2=5 quote:
"As a corporate practice we don't go into ongoing characterization of discussions with our suppliers or vendors," said Nicholas Graham, AOL spokesman. "Having said that, many claims that Cogent have made so far are inaccurate and contain misrepresentations."
Translation: "having said that, let me characterize these discussions thusly..."
Seems slightly contradictory to anyone else? | |
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caleet
Radio X - Usradiox.Com
Premium
join:2002-05-29
Middletown, OH | WAHHH! Refer to Catchy title! | |
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53059959
Temp banned from BBR more then anyone
join:2002-10-02
PwnZone | whats the problem? dosent AOL want cheap bandwith also? | |
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anony23
join:2001-07-20
Haymarket, VA
| Re: whats the problem? this is really quite simple, Cogent was trying to use AOL as their tier 1 provider, sending most of there outbound traffic to AOL. If this wasn't the case why do you think there was so much trouble when the peering was shut down??? Money talks, BS walks. | |
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mballard
Premium,ExMod 1999-03
join:1999-11-15
Los Angeles, CA
clubs: 
| Re: whats the problem? said by anony23  :
this is really quite simple, Cogent was trying to use AOL as their tier 1 provider, sending most of there outbound traffic to AOL. If this wasn't the case why do you think there was so much trouble when the peering was shut down??? Money talks, BS walks.
That's a dramatic oversimplification, there was so much trouble because AOL hosts a lot of major websites (like CNN), and when the peering links were shut down, all of the traffic destined for the AOL network had to be routed through other links, and the capacity wasn't there on those other links, which caused problems with accessing the sites that would otherwise go through those links. | |
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bistro777
Donuts-Is There Anything They Can't Do?
Premium
join:2002-02-07
Englewood, CO
| A simple business decision From the Washington Post article earlier this month - - - “The disconnection occurred after AOL said Cogent did not meet the necessary requirements to merit a free, dedicated connection to the AOL network. The relationship was unequal, AOL said; AOL was carrying three times as much data traffic back to its customers as Cogent was to its customers. Normally, AOL agrees to carry no more than double its traffic, or else it charges for the dedicated connection, officials at the Internet service provider said.”
So, on the face of it, this looks like a simple business decision regarding an unequal partnership. If you and I carpool, and I do it 3x as often as you and pay 3x the gas and tolls, wouldn’t anyone else call that an unequal arrangement? Cogent needs to join the real world of peering plus build-out its network a bit instead of crying about this. (And AOL is not the only company to have called-off peering arrangements with them – look at Sprint/PSINet/Netrail.)
The box said "Requires Windows 98 or better." So I installed LINUX. | |
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JakCrow
join:2001-12-06
Palo Alto, CA
| Re: A simple business decision said by bistro777 :
So, on the face of it, this looks like a simple business decision regarding an unequal partnership. If you and I carpool, and I do it 3x as often as you and pay 3x the gas and tolls, wouldn’t anyone else call that an unequal arrangement? Cogent needs to join the real world of peering plus build-out its network a bit instead of crying about this. (And AOL is not the only company to have called-off peering arrangements with them – look at Sprint/PSINet/Netrail.)
The idea of -paying- another party to peer with them is ridiculous. For your information, Cogent IS in the real world of peering. It's companies like AOL who think its shit don't stink when it tries to charge peers for the supposed "privilege" of passing traffic between networks, when it's really free bandwidth.
BTW: Peering does not shovel off a company's traffic to someone else. It means that traffic between networks is the smallest possible route and doesn't use transit provider bandwidth, like if someone on Cogent's network wants to look up a website that's on AOL's network, the traffic goes straight to and back from AOL instead of going over some other route. Most honest companies peer at common points of presence with others. Peering costs NOTHING, and in fact, is a cost benefit to ALL PARTIES INVOLVED. AOL is trying to charge someone for saving them money, regardless of the "imbalance" in the peering traffic (which, again, costs them nothing).
[text was edited by author 2003-01-24 17:15:15] | |
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Buck Fush
Great Minds With Great Debts.
join:2001-02-24
| Even though you made it clear, I would bet that people will still confuse this peering arrangement with transit.
Down here, our major cities have their on IX(Internet Exchanges) which simply link all the ISPs in a city, TORIX is a fine example of that in the Toronto(Canada) area. We have so many DSL resellers down here, and most of them are linked using TORIX( »www.torix.ca/?data=peers ) so their traffic to each other doesn't have to go through a transit carrier. At times, we visit sites, say Bell Nexxia(don't peer with TORIX), which happens to be in the city I am in, and my routing takes me to TO--}CH--}TO--}Nexxia which I think is just lame when both things are in the same city, thats where Peering makes sense. Here's an example
...
5 25 ms 26 ms 25 ms chx-edge-01.inet.qwest.net [65.121.248.101]
6 25 ms 26 ms 26 ms chi-core-03.inet.qwest.net [205.171.220.13]
7 25 ms 26 ms 27 ms chi-brdr-03.inet.qwest.net [205.171.20.142]
8 25 ms 30 ms 26 ms bx2-chicago23-pos2-0.in.bellnexxia.net [206.108.108.197]
9 25 ms 29 ms 26 ms core2-chicago23-pos10-3.in.bellnexxia.net [206.108.103.121]
10 36 ms 36 ms 36 ms core3-toronto63-pos6-3.in.bellnexxia.net [206.108.103.113]
11 37 ms 37 ms 37 ms core2-torontodc-pos3-0.in.bellnexxia.net [206.108.98.250]
12 37 ms 37 ms 38 ms dis4-torontodc-Vlan82.in.bellnexxia.net [206.108.104.30]
...
[text was edited by author 2003-01-24 19:14:14]
[text was edited by author 2003-01-24 19:16:20] | |
| | | mdurkin
join:1999-08-11
San Bruno, CA
| said by JakCrow :
said by bistro777 :
So, on the face of it, this looks like a simple business decision regarding an unequal partnership. If you and I carpool, and I do it 3x as often as you and pay 3x the gas and tolls, wouldn’t anyone else call that an unequal arrangement? Cogent needs to join the real world of peering plus build-out its network a bit instead of crying about this. (And AOL is not the only company to have called-off peering arrangements with them – look at Sprint/PSINet/Netrail.)
The idea of -paying- another party to peer with them is ridiculous. For your information, Cogent IS in the real world of peering. It's companies like AOL who think its shit don't stink when it tries to charge peers for the supposed "privilege" of passing traffic between networks, when it's really free bandwidth.
BTW: Peering does not shovel off a company's traffic to someone else. It means that traffic between networks is the smallest possible route and doesn't use transit provider bandwidth, like if someone on Cogent's network wants to look up a website that's on AOL's network, the traffic goes straight to and back from AOL instead of going over some other route. Most honest companies peer at common points of presence with others. Peering costs NOTHING, and in fact, is a cost benefit to ALL PARTIES INVOLVED. AOL is trying to charge someone for saving them money, regardless of the "imbalance" in the peering traffic (which, again, costs them nothing).
[text was edited by author 2003-01-24 17:15:15]
It's not that simple. There are legitimate reasons why a provider receiving more traffic on an interconnection like AOL apparently is would want settlements. With the typical hot-potato routing, Cogent would be pushing their outbound traffic destined for AOL out the nearest peering connection, and AOL would be hauling that traffic across the country in many cases. It's difficult to exchange enough detail with BGP so that Cogent could know where AOL's destination customer is located to move the traffic closer; if they get it wrong then they can wind up moving traffic from Cogent in San Francisco to Chicago only for it to be delivered to an AOL customer in San Francisco. Hot potato gives the packets to the ISP best positioned to know where their own customer is as soon as possible and route it most efficiently, but it means the receiving ISP tends to move the packets farther. This is the same reason why many large ISPs will not peer with other ISPs unless they meet them at at least 3-5 peering points in several diverse geographic locations around the country.
The other major factor is the simple fact that ISPs can get more money from web hosting customers than they can from access customers--in this situation, AOL is the access provider and Cogent is the hoster. Not withstanding the fact that Cogent is flat-rate (and don't forget that Cogent's own customer contracts have requirements that customers maintain no worse than certain ratios of outbound:inbound traffic), AOL and most other ISPs likely get more revenue per Mbps from hosting customers than from access customers. | |
| | | | rodrod5
join:2001-02-28
Houston, TX
| Re: A simple business decision said by mdurkin :
It's not that simple. There are legitimate reasons why a provider receiving more traffic on an interconnection like AOL apparently is would want settlements. With the typical hot-potato routing, Cogent would be pushing their outbound traffic destined for AOL out the nearest peering connection, and AOL would be hauling that traffic across the country in many cases. It's difficult to exchange enough detail with BGP so that Cogent could know where AOL's destination customer is located to move the traffic closer; if they get it wrong then they can wind up moving traffic from Cogent in San Francisco to Chicago only for it to be delivered to an AOL customer in San Francisco. Hot potato gives the packets to the ISP best positioned to know where their own customer is as soon as possible and route it most efficiently, but it means the receiving ISP tends to move the packets farther. This is the same reason why many large ISPs will not peer with other ISPs unless they meet them at at least 3-5 peering points in several diverse geographic locations around the country.
The other major factor is the simple fact that ISPs can get more money from web hosting customers than they can from access customers--in this situation, AOL is the access provider and Cogent is the hoster. Not withstanding the fact that Cogent is flat-rate (and don't forget that Cogent's own customer contracts have requirements that customers maintain no worse than certain ratios of outbound:inbound traffic), AOL and most other ISPs likely get more revenue per Mbps from hosting customers than from access customers.
cogent makes the exact opposite statement of yours in this article »www.isp-planet.com/business/2003···ing.html
""Cogent argues that AOL doesn't have a network to speak of, thus while Cogent does send a lot of traffic to AOL it is all local, whereas AOL's traffic typically has to travel long distances on Cogent's network, costing Cogent a pretty penny.""
Cogent is different from many truly second tier ISPs since it controls a large national fiber optic backbone. Thus, a settlement with AOL could include some kind of barter where Cogent would offer AOL national transit at below market prices. ..... This sounds like a shake down to me
[text was edited by author 2003-01-24 19:34:35] | |
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bistro777
Donuts-Is There Anything They Can't Do?
Premium
join:2002-02-07
Englewood, CO
| Always good to hear from "the Cogent contingent."  (BTW, I am familiar with BGP and peering, thank you.)
I just find it ironic that Cogent cries foul when Cogent, itself, has inbound/outbound traffic constraints for its own customers. Sorry, but when one party is being disadvantaged in a peering arrangement, it usually has the right to terminate it. (And this wasn't Cogent's first experience - ask those in the know about the Sprint/PSINet/NetRail peering terminations with Cogent.)
"If I didn't kick Bill Clinton's ass every day, he wouldn't be worth anything." - - Hillary Rodham Clinton, 1980. | |
| rodrod5
join:2001-02-28
Houston, TX
| aol host nothing while i will be the first to admit i do not like aol for many reasons i am not trying to bash them here
the fact is that compared to many networks aol host almost nothing....what is aol?? they are a huge dialup service
no one on aol is hosting their own server on aol or even a crappy web page
all of aols traffic is within aol or going out of the walled garden to the real web to get something important
besides out going email how much traffic does aol have for anyone else to recieve from the aol network so that there will be even peering
everyone should just tell aol screw you and pull the plug on them...then they can have that "scientology of the internet like" atmosphere they always dreamed of | |
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Buck Fush
Great Minds With Great Debts.
join:2001-02-24 | Re: aol host nothing hmm no, AOL has tons of broadband users, DSL & Cable. | |
| | | rodrod5
join:2001-02-28
Houston, TX | Re: aol host nothing 1. aol broadband is very small part of aol subs
2. you cannot host servers on RR or aol cable and i do not believe you can on their dsl either
the article says "cogent claims aol has no network to speak of" | |
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Voyager2K2
join:2001-10-04
Wayne, PA
 ·Verizon FIOS
| AOL Content? CNN? Is that the best they can offer? With PREMIUM video content.
No thanks, I'll stick to Yahoo. Yahoo can still make a profit and give you anything AOL can provide and still show a profit.
AOL is providing a pseudo-ISP experience for more $$ and still lose money. Time to chop some heads at the top. Talk about top heavy. | |
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DSLTech
join:2000-12-30
San Jose, CA
| Let me get this right .. AOL is complaining that its receiving 3 times more traffic from Cogent than Cogent is receiving from AOL?
TIMEOUT.. lets do the math here:
What creates this traffic? Who? What direction is it going in? From Cogent to AOL? If so, who's customers are creating the traffic? Umm... AOL's? So who's really to blame for the traffic.
DUHHHHHHHHHHHHH.
Correct me if I'm mistaken. | |
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mballard
Premium,ExMod 1999-03
join:1999-11-15
Los Angeles, CA
clubs:
| Re: Let me get this right .. I believe what they mean is that Cogent is sending three times as much traffic that is originated from it's customers (the customers being the requestors of traffic), so that as far as actual traffic, there's more bandwidth being used going from AOL to Cogent. | |
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DSLTech
join:2000-12-30
San Jose, CA
| Doesnt seem likely, to be honest.
HOwever, AOL does have the "bring your own access" plan, where you use another ISP but then only pay AOL for CONTENT. HOw much of that traffic is generated from AOL CONTENT customers that are on other ISPs?
I guess AOL wants to have their cake(AOL Content customers) and EAT it(have peers pay) too. Amazing nerve. And you wonder why folks don't like AOL .. Miscrients leading morons. | |
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scooby
Premium
join:2001-05-01
Schaumburg, IL | Why connect to Cogent? Cogent is home to more spammers then any other provider on the net. By closing down their peering, AOL makes cogent pay to send that traffic over. | |
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Re: A simple business decision
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