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Chrysalis · 08-10-2005, 00:53

Ok this happened yesterday level3 had issued a month's notice to a few teir 2 isp's of depeering and cogent was the only one that came out with a problem. This occured seemingly because cogent didnt arrange alternative routing before the depeer occured.

Their are various points of view on why this happened, the view I am going with is that cogent has made an attempt to bully level3 into reestablishing the peering session as both isp's are cutoff from each other thus damaging level3 as well as cogent. Cogent was succesful in this tactic against france telecom and teleglobe but unsuccesful against AOL.

The reason for the depeering is I believe the traffic ratio's were unbalanced and cogent was slamming a lot of traffic down level3's line's whilst less was going the other way, this is understandable since cogent is selling very cheap transit mainlt to us unmetered dedicated server providers who wants lots of high volume cheap bandwidth, the price cogent selling at roughly 1/5th of the normal rate, so effectively level3 was subsidising their competitor. Also note XO who was also depeered didnt have any issue since it is assumed they paid to keep their transit going.

After some clever press releases by cogent the peering is now back on, but if this is temporary or permanent I don't know yet, but if the peering isnt permanent and cogent end up paying for the transit then the cogent transit's will most likely rise damaging many budget provider's this was probably the aim of level3. It would also probably trigger more tier1's to depeer cogent. But as of right now it is looking like cogent has bluffed level3 and level3 have come out of this with a damaged reputation.

My stand on this is level3 gave sufficient notice to cogent, they was in their legal right to depeer cogent and wanted to balance out market prices by making cogent pay for their level3 transit, but cogent now has such volume of customers they are looking like they might win this battle.

08-10-2005, 00:53	#3
Chrysalis cf.mega poster Join Date: Sep 2003 Posts: 12,050	Re: cogent vs layer3 Ok this happened yesterday level3 had issued a month's notice to a few teir 2 isp's of depeering and cogent was the only one that came out with a problem. This occured seemingly because cogent didnt arrange alternative routing before the depeer occured. Their are various points of view on why this happened, the view I am going with is that cogent has made an attempt to bully level3 into reestablishing the peering session as both isp's are cutoff from each other thus damaging level3 as well as cogent. Cogent was succesful in this tactic against france telecom and teleglobe but unsuccesful against AOL. The reason for the depeering is I believe the traffic ratio's were unbalanced and cogent was slamming a lot of traffic down level3's line's whilst less was going the other way, this is understandable since cogent is selling very cheap transit mainlt to us unmetered dedicated server providers who wants lots of high volume cheap bandwidth, the price cogent selling at roughly 1/5th of the normal rate, so effectively level3 was subsidising their competitor. Also note XO who was also depeered didnt have any issue since it is assumed they paid to keep their transit going. After some clever press releases by cogent the peering is now back on, but if this is temporary or permanent I don't know yet, but if the peering isnt permanent and cogent end up paying for the transit then the cogent transit's will most likely rise damaging many budget provider's this was probably the aim of level3. It would also probably trigger more tier1's to depeer cogent. But as of right now it is looking like cogent has bluffed level3 and level3 have come out of this with a damaged reputation. My stand on this is level3 gave sufficient notice to cogent, they was in their legal right to depeer cogent and wanted to balance out market prices by making cogent pay for their level3 transit, but cogent now has such volume of customers they are looking like they might win this battle.