CapinPete
Premium
join:2002-12-23
Loxahatchee, FL | That's right
Good move by Level 3. There will be no one to blame when the connections go down on 11/09 but Cogent and their sorry asses.
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TKJunkMail
Enjoy the sun
Premium
join:2002-03-03
Avalon, NJ
 ·Sprint Mobile Broa..
 ·Comcast
| said by CapinPete  :Good move by Level 3. There will be no one to blame when the connections go down on 11/09 but Cogent and their sorry asses. That puts the ball back in Cogent's court and calls them out as liars in their press release.
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Kip patterson
Premium
join:2000-10-23
Columbus, OH | reply to CapinPete
That was a well-crafted press release. It certainly will defuse criticism of Level3, as it should in my opinion. |
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smcallah
join:2004-08-05
Home
| reply to CapinPete
But it was Level(3) that turned this back up because THEIR customers were complaining to them.
Do you think that having so many large dialup ISP's and RoadRunner as their customers that they weren't catching any flack from this? They did this to appease their own customers. There is no reason to think otherwise. Level(3)'s customers were complaining to Level(3), and Level(3) stopped it.
If Cogent lets it drop on Nov. 9, then Level(3) can have a better excuse to give their customers. But I doubt it will stop them from complaining. |
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PunkGod
join:2003-02-02
1 edit | reply to CapinPete
Maybe good for them but I have roadrunner and I noticed alot of websites I visit wouldn't come up and the ones I could were slow as hell.
I got back to looking at a few websites and noticed it seemed faster than earlier. I came here and noticed they reconnected. |
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bmn
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Premium,ExMod 2003-06
join:2001-03-15
hiatus
| reply to smcallah
said by smcallah :If Cogent lets it drop on Nov. 9, then Level(3) can have a better excuse to give their customers. I think with it out that Level(3) gave Cogent over 75 days notice, they already have a good excuse... Cogent dropping the ball on Nov. 9th would just be a repeat of what happened the other day.
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smcallah
join:2004-08-05
Home
| Level(3) can't use the 75 day notice, if it does indeed exist, as an excuse. Because they didn't notify their customers at all before they turned it off. Not 75 days before, not 30 days before, not 1 week before, not 24 hours before. Not even 1 hour before.
The Nov. 9th date is in an official press release. |
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jnxrox
join:2005-10-07
Las Vegas, NV
| Take a step back
Level3's general customer profile is not a small/med, single-homed business. They cater to large multi-homed carriers and businesses. Cogent's customer base is much more vunerable here. It's the single-homed level3 customer to the Cogent single-homed customer that is impacted and as low cost vendor to the masses, that fits the cogent profile more. Level3 isn't going to connect to transit to satisfy such a small % of customers just to get to Cogent's single-homed customers. Cogent has more skin in the game and you saw that desperation in their initial responses.
Disconnecting peering happens. Cogent was notified and did not make arrangements for their customers. Level3 disconnected and that was their plan. If you check the reality on the connectivity affected, it's smaller than Cogent would lead you to believe. Most companies are multi-homed and in fine shape for re-routing around these issues. |
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BosstonesOwn
join:2002-12-15
Everett, MA
clubs:
·Comcast
| reply to smcallah
Re: That's right
said by smcallah :But it was Level(3) that turned this back up because THEIR customers were complaining to them. Do you think that having so many large dialup ISP's and RoadRunner as their customers that they weren't catching any flack from this? They did this to appease their own customers. There is no reason to think otherwise. Level(3)'s customers were complaining to Level(3), and Level(3) stopped it. If Cogent lets it drop on Nov. 9, then Level(3) can have a better excuse to give their customers. But I doubt it will stop them from complaining. Level 3 customers (yeah I use them) never had a problem reaching cogent or at least none of my servers. The had another peering agreement in place to take up the slack of the cogent drop. GCW ? I think it was. all be it it took a couple more hops to hit SJ but it still got there in under 200 ms. So I am happy.
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bmn
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Premium,ExMod 2003-06
join:2001-03-15
hiatus
| reply to smcallah
said by smcallah :Level(3) can't use the 75 day notice, if it does indeed exist, as an excuse. Actually they can. By giving Cogent at least 75 days notice, it gave Cogent the oppurtunity to prepare for the peering sessions to be ended.
Because they didn't notify their customers at all before they turned it off. Not 75 days before, not 30 days before, not 1 week before, not 24 hours before. Not even 1 hour before. They don't have to nor should they have to, otherwise Level3 would be required to notify customers of every tiny change. All they are required to do is tell Cogent. Once Cogent is notified, the ball is 100% in Cogent's court - they either fix their traffic profiles or they take measures to ensure routes to Level3.
As it stands, from the information available, Cogent totally dropped the ball here and this problem, considering they were given notice, appears to be their fault for the most part. They knew they would be cut off and failed to ensure they had alternate routes to Level3.
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smcallah
join:2004-08-05
Home
| said by bmn :They don't have to nor should they have to, otherwise Level3 would be required to notify customers of every tiny change. Tiny change? You think THIS was a tiny change?
Level(3) DOES notify its customers of major changes in the network. Most large providers I know do this, it's in their contracts with their customers. Especially ones with Service Level Agreements that require daily or monthly credits to be given when that SLA is not met.
I can't believe you consider this a tiny change that Level(3) made. |
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smcallah
join:2004-08-05
Home
| reply to BosstonesOwn
Level(3) did not have any Cogent routes on their network since Wednesday, that was easy to see with their looking glass server. They had no alternate routes to Cogent, or this wouldn't have been a problem.
RoadRunner, one of Level(3)'s largest customers, certainly couldn't reach Cogent through Level(3), as evidenced by all the posts from RoadRunner customers here. |
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smcallah
join:2004-08-05
Home
| reply to jnxrox
Re: Take a step back
Well, since Level(3) turned this back on because of customer complaints, obviously there was a lot of need for their customers to get to Cogent.
If it was as "small" an impact as you say, Level(3) wouldn't have been bothered by a "few" customer complaints.
Also, sometimes multihomed customers don't want to use their backup connection, because they may be paying more per megabit for it. Say you're paying Level(3) for a 155 mbps connection, and it's $50/mbit. And you have another connection to Provider X, who charges you $150/mbit, but ONLY if you use them. So that peer is running at 0, you're paying them nothing until you use it. Then suddenly 20% of your 155 mbps goes to your backup connection. All of a sudden you're looking at paying an extra $4600 a month that you didn't have to pay, because now one of your providers doesn't have any routes to Cogent.
Many multihomed customers are setup like that. They have a main link, and a backup. Sure, it was their choice to get such a link. But it is people like this that can pressure Level(3) to do what they had to do. I worked for a year for a small hosting company that had a Level(3) connection and a connection to another ISP that worked like this. |
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vferrari3
join:2005-10-07
Boston, MA
| said by smcallah :Well, since Level(3) turned this back on because of customer complaints, obviously there was a lot of need for their customers to get to Cogent. If it was as "small" an impact as you say, Level(3) wouldn't have been bothered by a "few" customer complaints. It wasn't turned back on because of customer complaints. It was turned on to help Cogent which was the more desperate party here. Notice the lack of information from Level3 as opposed to the screaming and press releases coming out of Cogent. It will be the same in Nov., Level3 will not pay to reach a small % of single homed cogent customers.
Mostly you'll still use the Level3 link to get to the many Cogent multi-homed customers, you'll just take a different path. But, yes in your scenario you would start using the unused link to get to the single-homed Cogent customers. Tell me why this is Level3's problem? They run their business, you run yours. With all the people up in arms there's one thing that seems to always be forgotten...this is not an unusual thing to happen, the Cogent response is what is the unusual piece. They did the same thing with others in the past and had to purchase routes to fill in their 'gaps'. You never hear about the other times carriers de-peer with each other because it's taken care of during the period of notice. Cogent uses the period to call the other carrier's bluff, and when connectivity is lost they smear. It's happened more than once.
This was more a PR war then anything and Cogent won the battle.
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bmn
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Premium,ExMod 2003-06
join:2001-03-15
hiatus
| reply to smcallah
Re: That's right
said by smcallah :said by bmn :They don't have to nor should they have to, otherwise Level3 would be required to notify customers of every tiny change. Tiny change? You think THIS was a tiny change? No, but you misunderstood, so I'll clarify...
Level(3) shouldn't need to be required to notify its customers of a peering change, otherwise then they would have to start to notifying their customers to tiny changes to the network. Is that more clear ?
Level(3) DOES notify its customers of major changes in the network. Most large providers I know do this, it's in their contracts with their customers. Especially ones with Service Level Agreements that require daily or monthly credits to be given when that SLA is not met.
I can't believe you consider this a tiny change that Level(3) made. Actually, you are right, this isn't a tiny change in the network, but I never considered it one. The point here is that it was Cogent's responsibility to make sure that it had routes to Level3 once Level3 notified them about the peering sessions being dropped. Level3 incorrectly assumed that Cogent would do ITS job and find alternate paths to their network via other transits providers.
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smcallah
join:2004-08-05
Home
| I still think you misunderstood.
Obviously Level(3) customers were pulling a lot of traffic from Cogent, or there wouldn't have been an issue here.
So this peering change would have been a change worthy of notifying their customers. They didn't notify their customers of it. And suddenly their customers' customers were complaining, and Level(3)'s customers could only say, "Not our fault." But that doesn't make customers understand the problem, even if it was explained to them, a non-technical customer isn't going to understand, neither are the ones that think they know what BGP is.
So Level(3) had RoadRunner and several large dialup ISP's fielding calls, giving credits, and losing customers during the almost 3 days that this was down.
I don't see how you think that notifying their customers of a major peering change would suddenly open them up to having to notify of every tiny change.
And what makes it ONLY Cogent's responsibility to make sure they could get Level(3) routes? Why wouldn't Level(3) have a resposibility to give their own customers routes to Cogent? And now obviously they have taken up that responsibility, by turning this back on because of customer complaints. |
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smcallah
join:2004-08-05
Home
| reply to vferrari3
Re: Take a step back
said by vferrari3 : It wasn't turned back on because of customer complaints. Sorry, but it was because of Level(3) customer complaints that this was turned back on.
Level(3) didn't care about helping Cogent, they cared about helping themselves. If they cared about helping Cogent, they would have extended this without turning it off.
But since Level(3) also had losing customers and losing revenue on its mind, they had to turn this back on. They were the only ones with the ability to turn it on.
It doesn't matter if it's Level(3)'s fault or not. The only reason they exist is for customers. If they lose those, what do they have? |
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bmn
? ? ?
Premium,ExMod 2003-06
join:2001-03-15
hiatus
| reply to smcallah
Re: That's right
said by smcallah :I still think you misunderstood. Obviously Level(3) customers were pulling a lot of traffic from Cogent, or there wouldn't have been an issue here. No, the issue is that Cogent doesn't have enough users on its network to balance out the amount of traffic being sent to other networks. I recommend checking out when AOL dropped its SFI with Cogent and when C&W dropped its SFI with Cogent
said by smcallah :And what makes it ONLY Cogent's responsibility to make sure they could get Level(3) routes? Why wouldn't Level(3) have a resposibility to give their own customers routes to Cogent? And now obviously they have taken up that responsibility, by turning this back on because of customer complaints. Because, as an upstream Tier 1, Level3 receives the routes TO Congent's network FROM Cogent or via Cogent's transit providers. Without receiving those routes from Cogent, Level3 has no way of knowing how to get there... Level3 can't magically guess how to get to Congent without getting BGP information from Cogent. Level3 is not the one responsible to make sure that it can even see Cogent's networks since they don't have any control over Cogent's BGP information.
And the reason that Level3 took up the responsibility of getting routes to Cogent is because Cogent did not.
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Tor server operator... Helping the free flow of information daily. |
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vferrari3
join:2005-10-07
Boston, MA
| reply to smcallah
Re: Take a step back
said by smcallah :Sorry, but it was because of Level(3) customer complaints that this was turned back on. Level(3) didn't care about helping Cogent, they cared about helping themselves. If they cared about helping Cogent, they would have extended this without turning it off. You don't get it. They have no obligation to extend without turning it off. Peering is for mutual benefit. When one party no longer perceives benefit they back out. The party that relies on that arrangement too much is the weaker of the two. Level3 turned it back on because clearly there were PR implications where the public was not understanding the issues and they gave Cogent a reprieve. They knew what they were doing, they've done it before and come november, they will still not have those Cogent routes unless cogent utilizes their transit providers. Level3 did a risk analysis and/or cost analysis. The arrangement doesn't work for them. There's nothing wrong with that. They believe that the cost to keep the peering up is too much and is not balanced by the revenue they take in from the smaller single homed customer that were affected. If those customers go away, it may even be that they perceive that as a good thing. Smaller customers in the wholesale carrier business are usually higher cost to operate and higher cost to provision. It's a business decision and if you don't like it, take your business elsewhere. Again, I applaud that decision and there's nothing wrong with that. Forcing Level3 to keep up links that are not beneficial to their business is what would be wrong.
How would you like it if you were forced to keep a business relationship going that you perceived as bad for your business? You'd want out if an arrangement with a supplier was no longer benefitting you.
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vferrari3
join:2005-10-07
Boston, MA
| reply to smcallah
Re: That's right
said by smcallah :I still think you misunderstood. So Level(3) had RoadRunner and several large dialup ISP's fielding calls, giving credits, and losing customers during the almost 3 days that this was down. I don't see how you think that notifying their customers of a major peering change would suddenly open them up to having to notify of every tiny change. And what makes it ONLY Cogent's responsibility to make sure they could get Level(3) routes? Why wouldn't Level(3) have a resposibility to give their own customers routes to Cogent? And now obviously they have taken up that responsibility, by turning this back on because of customer complaints. That's what the notice was for. Level3 is in the position of strength. They gave Cogent the notice to make arrangements to get to Level3 after the peering goes down. Level3 has the eyeballs and that's the position of strength. I know you don't like it, but this is the way it is and has been. Cogent is the one with the history of not being able to play nice and has been through this before. Most carriers respect the model and when peers de-peer them, they make the arrangements.
BTW, what does RR have to do with this. RR should be multi-homed and should not be caught up in this. If they were, shame on them. I think you're over estimating the number and type of customers that Level3 would be losing. Again, for their business model they may even expect to lose the lower end of the base in order to continue mining the higher end of their base. They have multiple 10Gb links to some customers, the single homed DS3 customer leaving is not affecting them.
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