Re: Cogent/Level 3 depeering

[Deepak Jain <deepak () ai net>]

> If you don't have enable on a router, and you've never negotiated
> peering with a transit free ISP then you're not qualified to comment.
> You really don't understand what's going on here, and it's not, I
> repeat, not a technical problem.  There is nothing wrong with the
> technology, architecture, or anything else.  There is something
> wrong with the business model of one, or both of these companies.

I agree. Though many of the people who meet the second criteria don't 
even have enable anymore. :)

That said, the business relationships that have evolved have certainly
overwhelmed -- or rather use a very specific definition of 
connectivity/reachability, etc. When two transit free networks peer, its
often in many locations over many different political regions (time 
zones, geographies, pick your term). Deliberately and voluntarily taking 
that down does not change the stability of the underlying architecture.

Certainly anyone who runs any network of any size knows very well that 
the Internet does not survive conscience, deliberate breakage well at 
all -- nor was it architected to. Put a little knowledge into a border 
router that is a part of the "Internet" and watch the chaos you can create.

Further, the "survivability" we talk about also requires that the end 
nodes, clients, networks, ISPs design for fault-tolerance. This would 
imply no single-connections. Like all de-peerings, this creates the most 
hardship for those Enterprise customers (and smaller customers) that 
either don't have the know how to know they need multiple providers and 
portable space or the smaller customers that can't afford it [business 
model or actual finance]. Those of us who are customers of both networks 
or customers of neither network wouldn't even notice.

I think Cogent's offer of providing free transit to all single homed 
Level3 customers is particularly clever and being underpublicized. I 
wouldn't be surprised if Cogent is in more buildings than Level3 with a 
high degree of overlap with the entire Level3 lit network. That could be 
a very nasty "competitor" to force into your customers awareness by your
own action (or inaction) -- especially if your customer is single homed 
to you and realizes now that isn't enough of the "Internet" for them.

Deepak